An advert featuring a giant panda bear with a bleeding, hacked off
nose has been produced by a local advertising agency as part of an
international campaign to curb the slaughter of Africa’s rhinos.
Produced by Durban agency Roots Branding, the advert was published in
Wildside magazine this month, along with several articles on the rhino
poaching crisis in SA. The ad has also been widely circulated in a
viral web based campaign.
The ad has also been translated into Madarin, and contrasts the plight
of China’s revered national symbol with that of Africa’s rhino. It
calls for an end to the use of rhino horn in traditional Asian
medicine and questions what would happen to China’s dwindling
population of panda bears if people held the belief that bear noses
contained medicinal properties.
When a panda dies in China, literally hundreds of mourners go to their
burial service. We need this nation to understand that we feel just as
passionately about the rhino, as it is also one of our national
symbols. By educating the market for rhino horn as to the importance
of this animal to our nation we hope that they will change their
behaviour of using the horn in traditional remedies.
According to Torsten Fehsenfeld from Roots, the ad is not intended as
a malicious “tit for tat” response, but rather to raise public
awareness by contrasting the plight of two endangered wildlife species
which serve as national symbols of their respective nations.
The plight of SA’s rhino population is reaching critical levels – over
430 rhinos were slaughtered in 2011, and already over 150 have been
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