Rhino Operation Rescue

SOPHIE STAFFORD relates how Rhino Conservation Botswana brought two naughty rhinos back home after they had gone walkabout

- Sophie Stafford

After receiving a call from a cattle herder at a remote outpost in Makgadikgadi Pans to say that two rhinos had been seen there, Rhino Conservation Botswana scrambled a rescue team to bring the pair back to safety.

Whoosh… Whoosh… Each belly-deep exhalation blew a tiny tornado of hot African sand into the air as the black rhino dozed—in a fog of sedation, oblivious to the solicitous team watching over her. Tubes protruded from her nose, a scarf covered her eyes, and in her ears a pair of old, balled-up socks muted the sound of the fervent activity going on around her inert body. For this wasn’t just any rhino. This was Moratiwa, one of the precious black rhinos living in Botswana and cared for by RCB. And we’d come to rescue her…

THE POACHING CRISIS

As the poaching crisis continues to take a deadly toll on Africa’s black and white rhinos, RCB and our partners have begun building ark populations of these threatened species in northern Botswana. Here, the natural features of the Okavango Delta— namely lots of water, lots of hippos and lots of tourist camps—plus a president committed to conservation, as well as some of the most robust wildlife protection measures in all Africa offer a safe haven for these beleaguered giants.

Each individual has been brought to Botswana (a country devoid of wild rhinos for nearly 10 years) by conservationists and rhino-lovers who have supported the relocation of these animals to this watery wilderness from areas suffering from intense poaching pressure in South Africa and Zimbabwe.