Black rhino guardian programme yielding results: SANParks

While there are about 20,000 white rhinos globally, there are only about 5,000 black rhinos alive across the world, heightening the need to study, understand, and preserve them.

SANParks has had a Rhino Guardian Programme running in the Northern parts of the Kruger National Park (KNP) since 2017.

KNP is believed to have about 300 black rhinos, and according to Catherine Dreyer, the black rhino coordinator for KNP, this programme has seen some of their movements tracked via satellite in order to study them.

The programme also cares for rhinos that survived poaching attempts in a boma in Kruger, and one adult female rhino has been cared for by Dreyer and her team for 10 months already after being found with a severely injured foot, believed to have suffered a gunshot wound,

“Because she is an adult black rhino of breeding age it was decided we would give it our all and do our best to heal her foot and at best, get her to breed,” says Dreyer about the rhino affectionally named Goose. There are suspicions that Goose might be pregnant already tough.

Black rhinos gestate for 15 to 16 months and weigh hundreds of kilograms (Goose weighs about 800 kilogram), so it’s hard to see if they are pregnant, and rhino pregnancy tests take very long to process.

Tebogo Manamela, a veterinary technologist helping Dreyer, says Some of the rhinos in the programme are used as surrogates for younger rhinos that are rescued and help them to bond with other rhinos.

 “If they are younger than a year, they go to an orphanage outside the park to care for them,” says Manamela.

The latest phase of the Black Rhino Guardian programme has seen cameras being installed at more than 50 locations throughout KNP in order to document black rhino movements, providing those protecting them with invaluable data.