Botanical artist worked to save Namibian rhinos from extinction

The Daily Telegraph

Saturday, June 18, 2005

LONDON -- Blythe Loutit, who died on Tuesday, co-founded with her husband Rudi the Save the Rhino Trust, which was established in 1984 to stop the slaughter of the black rhinoceros of the Kunene region of the arid north-west of Namibia. She was 64.

When the Loutits moved to Namibia's Skeleton Coast, they were horrified by the toll which poaching and war was taking on the indigenous wildlife, in particular the world's last remaining population of wild desert-adapted black rhino, whose numbers had crashed from around 300 in 1975 to between 30 and 60 by the early 1980s. Many carcasses had been found with the horns ripped off by chain saws. The animal was facing almost certain extinction.

Battling against what appeared to be a highly-organized and ruthless poacher network, the Loutits set up a monitoring program and sought to resolve the conflict between human and animal needs by working with village communities, government officials and community tourism programs.

By establishing tourist camps near existing settlements, employing and training local trackers (including convicted poachers who often had extensive knowledge of the rhino), they aimed to ensure that the proceeds from tourism benefited local people and gave them a stake in the rhino's survival. After 20 years, the Namibian rhino population has been brought back from the brink of extinction and now numbers around 200 animals.

Blythe Pascoe, the youngest of four children, was born on Nov. 14, 1940, at Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa, and grew up on an extensive farm where wild eland ran free with her horses.

She was educated at the Girls' Collegiate School, Pietermaritzburg, where she showed promise as an artist, and the Natal Technical College.

After a year in England studying textile design, she trained in scientific illustration at the Botanical Research Institute of South Africa and began her career as a botanical illustrator for the Natal Parks Board.

Over her career, she illustrated six books on the flora of Namibia, painted landscapes and wildlife and wrote and illustrated a children's book entitled The Magic Elephant.

In 1973, she married Rudi Loutit, a conservationist, and five years later they moved to Ugabmund in the Skeleton Coast Park, where Rudi was posted as warden.

Her interest in plants led Loutit to make expeditions deep into the surrounding desert in her Land Rover. Noticing that many of the plant species were being eaten by rhino, she began tracking the beasts, and was horrified at the number of mutilated carcasses of rhino and elephant that she found. From then on, she and her husband spent every available moment tracking the rhino and elephant by Land Rover and on horse-back, recording details of each animal they found.

Obituary of Blythe Loutit