***PLEASE NOTE: Due to an error on our initial Just Giving Page, we have had to start up a new page. We have raised a total of £760 which unfortunately doesn't show on this total***

The Great Big Rhino Project will bring a world class public art event to the streets, parks and open spaces of the English Riviera and Exeter.

For 10 weeks in the summer of 2016, life-size rhino sculptures will inhabit the streets, highlighting the significant conservation threat facing wild rhinos.

The Great Big Rhinos will be invading the streets from Saturday 30th July until Sunday 9th October 2016. They will then be at Paignton Zoo from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th October 2016. before being auctioned for charity on Thursday 3rd November 2016.

The rhino sculptures will be sold at a charity auction on Thursday 3rd November 2016 with the aim of raising as much money as possible for rhino conservation. Money raised at the auction will be channelled through Save the Rhino International, a UK-based NGO, and used to support anti-poaching patrols around the rhino reserves; to help stop poachers, who chop the horns of live adult rhinos, killing the parents and leaving the baby rhinos orphaned. It will also be used for habitat restoration on Java to increase the area available for the rhinos; and support for the intensively managed captive population of Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia.

Rhinos have been around for 40 million years and are an important part of a wide range of ecosystems in Africa and Asia. There are five species: black, white, greater one-horned, Javan and Sumatran. All of these are threatened with extinction – three are ‘Critically Endangered’ as defined by the IUCN (World Conservation Union). This means that they will not survive without massive and urgent action. We must not let them join the dodo in extinction!