The SA Post Office has issued a set of stamps featuring six endangered South African animals.  According to Mlu Mathonsi, acting Group CEO of the SA Post Office, a total of 50,000 stamp sheets will draw attention to the plight of the oribi, black rhino, grey crowned crane, ground hornbill, sungazer and Cape Parrot.

But the Post Office is doing more than raise awareness.  The Endangered Wildlife Trust has been engaged to train staff at South Africa’s international mail centres so that X-ray machine operators know how to identify animals and animal parts  in parcels to foreign countries.  The contents of all outgoing international mail items are checked by means of X-ray machines. 

The artwork was done by Alan Ainslie, a wildlife artist who has exhibited with world-renowned artists such as Raymond Harris-Ching (New Zealand), Keith Joubert (South Africa), and Paul Bosman (USA).

The stamps cost R3,00 each, a set of six costs R18,00 and the first-day cover R21,00.  The items are available at most post offices or at www.virtualpostoffice.co.za. The animals depicted on the six stamps were selected by the Endangered Wildlife Trust, an organisation founded in 1973 with the purpose of protecting South Africa’s threatened wildlife species.

The sungazer, largest of the girdled lizards, is found only in South Africa’s north eastern Free State as well as south western Mpumalanga.  These heraldic looking animals reproduce only every other year, produce only one or two offspring, and need undisturbed, unploughed land to live on.  The cultivation of their native grasslands, as well as illegal collecting for the pet trade and muti (traditional medicine) industry has brought their numbers into decline. Black rhinos occur only in Africa, and their numbers have been under great pressure as a result of illegal trade in rhino horn.  Rhinos are one of the oldest groups of mammals and did well until roughly 1960. Between that year and 1995, large-scale poaching caused a 98% collapse in their numbers. The remaining rhinos are now being poached at unprecedented levels and the black rhino has been listed as critically endangered.  

The oribi, a gracious little antelope, occurs along the eastern parts of Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. Trapped in snares and persecuted by hunters with dogs, the oribi is also losing its habitat to forestry, farming, and mining. 

The elegant grey crowned crane graces many of Africa’s wetlands. Threats to their populations include illegal capture for the pet trade and the loss or degradation of suitable wetland habitat, due to an increasing human population and demand for agricultural land and freshwater sources. These birds are listed as endangered. 

The imposing ground hornbill, largest of the hornbill family, is under threat through illegal hunting for traditional medicine, the bush-meat trade and habitat destruction due to human development.  In South Africa, they are mainly found in nature reserves in the eastern parts of the country where large trees for nesting and short grass for foraging are available.

The Cape parrot is South Africa’s only endemic parrot species and is found in the fragmented southern mistbelt forests.  Over the past 150 years, illegal capture for the wild-caught bird trade has reduced the numbers of the global wild population to less than 1600 individuals.

The commemorative envelope features a bearded vulture.  Listed as critically endangered, there is estimated to be only 100 breeding pairs and a total population of about 300 birds left in the wild.

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