Former WWF employee wins environmental prize for rhino
conservation In 1988, Du Troit developed a WWF project to survey
the status of black rhinos in the Zambezi Valley. Following this
he assisted with the establishment of the Lowveld Rhino
Conservancy Project for WWF Southern Africa Regional Programme
Office, which ran up until 2009. In 2009, Raoul set up the
Lowveld Rhino Trust (LRT) as an independent, stakeholder-based
body to completely subsume the former Rhino Conservancy Project.
LRT receives funding from various donors primarily via the
International Rhino Foundation with a proportion of budget still
provided by WWF through the Africa Rhino Programme. Zimbabwe has
the fourth largest rhino population in Africa. In 1992 there
were 85 rhinos in the Lowveld conservancies in Zimbabwe. This
was less than 5% of Zimbabwe's total rhino population. There are
now 530 rhinos, which is 77% of Zimbabwe's total population. A
total of 21 rhinos were poached in the Lowveld in 2010, compared
to the 71 in 2009. The Goldm