This year, I’m riding in the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 miles event on August 10th! But this sportive isn’t just about me having a fun jaunt around London and Surrey on some closed roads, this time I’m doing the sportive for charity as well, aiming to raise money for a cause I’ve been supporting for a few years now.

There are billions of humans on the planet, and plenty of charities out there looking to support us and keep us alive for as long as possible. But, what there aren’t many of are charities looking to help the species that there are becoming dangerously few of in this world, so this year I’ll be raising money for Save the Rhino!

Currently there are only about 28,000 rhinos surviving in the wild, with 3 of 5 species considered critically endangered! In the case of the Sumatran and Javan Rhinos, they are down to populations of less than 100 rhinos surviving in the wild. If we don’t do something now, the rhino will be extinct in our lifetime, if numbers continue to fall at the current projections that could be as early as 2026. For more information about rhinos including 10 reasons why you should be helping to save them, you can visit the Save the Rhino website.

The rhino is the longest surviving land mammal in existence, having survived for over 40 million years and mostly thanks to humans poaching them for their horns for hypothetical remedies or as rare ornaments they are on the verge of extinction.

I’ve been supporting Save the Rhino for many years now and one of the main reasons is that the charity was founded by one of my favourite authors: Douglas Adams. In 1989 Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine made a radio show and released a book called Last Chance to See, a series that would take Douglas to see the Northern white rhinoceros in Zaire, after which became one of the founding patrons of the charity. I would really like to hope that the book and radio series title can be proved wrong, and we’ll have a lot more chance to see the rhino in the wild for many years to come.

But to do that, they need your help. Please donate as much as you can on my fundraising page to help the Save the Rhino and help them support conservation efforts to help prevent these amazing animals from becoming extinct.