Ziggy The Zebra
An example of Africa’s poaching problem
When I was a boy some staff on our farm arrived at our house with a baby Zebra on the back of a truck.
My father and grandfather had converted a large portion of our farm into a conservation area. They worked tirelessly to reintroduce animals that had been pushed out of the area due to farming and human settlement.
Some of the animals included Zebra, Giraffe, Eland, Tsessebe and Wildebeest.
After the Zebra foal arrived at our door one of our rangers explained that she was found near her dead mother.
Her mother had been killed by Poachers!
We named her Ziggy. I’m not sure why but it sounded good to us kids.
We nursed Ziggy for several weeks feeding her with a bottle and a special milk formula. Unfortunately, without the specific antibodies of her mothers' milk she eventually became ill and passed away.
We were all devastated.
The day the poachers killed her mother they signed her death warrant too…
