Overview of the Project

Over the past 30 years, Noah's Ark has been involved in the care, rehabilitation and housing of orphaned, neglected, abused and abandoned wild animals. This project is fully dedicated to preserving the animals and supplying them with their natural habitat in a large reserve area. At first, the family used their own earnings to carry the project expenses, but due to dramatic increases in both the number of rescued animals and the running costs of the wildlife foundation, the need for a wildlife trust-fund was born. Having never received any government funds or grants, the family has still managed to win international acclaim for their success in rescuing and caring for the Namibian wildlife. The project is now a registered animal welfare organization.

Vision of Noah's Ark

This project will become a leader in eco-tourism in Southern Africa by establishing a model conservation area using the best of business and conservation practices to benefit the animals of the project, eco-tourists, donators and shareholders.

Noah's Ark recognizes that nature and wildlife conservation will not succeed unless they proceed along inclusive lines, with concrete benefits to surrounding communities and other stakeholders in the conservation area. As such, many of the leading camps and lodges in Southern Africa have voluntarily established community empowerment programs aimed at sharing the returns of environmentally responsible tourism with the people living around wilderness areas. This is precisely what the project wants to achieve, establishing a game reserve for orphaned animals from which the surrounding communities can also benefit. Trusting that conservation will protect the needs of people, Noah's Ark is also committed to providing health care for the rural communities around the farm.

Ongoing Research Projects

Noah's Ark believes in life and takes its role in conservation and the protection of the Namibian wildlife, land and people very seriously. Noah's Ark does everything possible to avoid resettled animals from being used for hunting or commercial purposes. Presently, there are two on-going projects coordinated by Noah's Ark :

. Wildlife Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Project
. African Wild Dog Project

Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Program

Noah's Ark has been rehabilitating sick, injured, orphaned and problem animals for the past 25 years and has, in this period, developed a perfect infrastructure for rehabilitation. This project rehabilitates animals - setting an international standard for wildlife rehabilitation. Noah's Ark then releases those animals into the proposed reserve, while monitor and managing released animals in the reserve; they also are actively seeking more release sites for fully rehabilitated animals.
Noah's Ark is an orphanage, where orphaned, neglected and injured animals find safe refuge while offering visitors the opportunity to get to know their characteristics. Leopards, Lions, Marmosets, Mongooses, Porcupines, Spotted Hyenas, Suricate Tortoises, Velvet Monkeys, Vultures, Warthogs, and African Wild Dogs are found in this project.

African Wild Dog Project

The African Wild Dog is one of the most endangered predators in Africa . African Wild Dog populations have declined to such an extent in the past 30 years that there are small populations left in only 14 countries where they were previously present in 39. Only six of these countries have populations of more than 100. The project recognizes the fact that the African Wild Dog is one of Namibia 's most valuable assets and, although reestablishing extirpated populations is one of the lower priorities of African Wild Dog conservation, it is technically possible to re-establish extirpated wild populations by reintroduction, but this provides no substitute for the conservation of existing populations. In highly fragmented landscapes, African Wild Dogs can be released into a network of small, fenced reserves each supporting one or a few packs to establish intensively managed meta-populations. This project intends releasing some of the current captively-held dogs into a proposed 10,000 ha (1 ha=2.47a acres) reserve. Noah's Ark further intends to generate income from these dogs through an already-established eco-tourism infrastructure.

The conservation benefits will be:

. To establish a source of African Wild Dogs for possible reintroduction into former ranges
. To provide a reserve, should African Wild Dog numbers decrease to critical levels
. To allow problem dogs to be moved to Noah's Ark (a well-established safe-haven for animals) as a temporary facility for later translocation
. To generate baseline bio-medical data with emphasis on disease screening, vaccine testing, genetics, parisitology, morphometrics and reproductive physiology
. To initiate a meta-population management program for African Wild Dogs in Namibia enabling a study of diet, predator, prey relationships, prey selection
. hunting success and interspecific competition