The Country With A Lot Of Elephants

On a glorious morning in Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi, a team at African Parks, a conservation group, is preparing what was once unthinkable.

The park is full of wildlife, hippos wallow in cool water and impala and waterbuck roam nearby. In the distance, far from this idyllic scene, some commotion has recently occurred – rumbling blades slicing the air, giant feet thudding across the ground, stray zebra darting away from the scene.

In the clear blue skies above the park each day, a helicopter has been circling families of about twelve elephants, driving them from the protection of the thick bush out onto the dry, open grasslands.

This is the site of one of the world's largest animal translocations ever attempted.

In June 2016, the process of moving 500 elephants from southern to northern Malawi began. The reason for moving them is surprising – while Africa as a continent struggles to protect the elephant species from extinction, in Malawi's Liwonde National Park there are actually too many of these giant creatures roaming the plains.

The oversupply of elephants in this region negatively affects the ecosystem and causes human-wildlife conflict. As there are so many elephants, the animals are forced to leave the park and stray onto the surrounding farmland, eating farmers' crops and in turn, being attacked by the locals who are trying to make a living.

Yet further north in Malawi, there are not enough elephants, and the parks would benefit from their presence. The solution, according to Malawi's Department of National Parks and African Parks, is a massive elephant translocation.

There are too many elephants in Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi. 

Down a crackly phone connection between Malawi and Nairobi, Kester Vickery, founder of Conservation Solutions, the organisation hired in to manage the project, explains the experience of moving these gentle giants to me, from start to finish.

They want to dart the matriarch first, the rest of the group will then surround her and become easier to hit

"It's terribly exciting." Vickery begins with enthusiasm. "We set off in the morning, looking for a target group of elephants to relocate." Once identified, the helicopter pilot and Andre Uys, a vet who specialises in rehoming large mammals, hover above the herd, discussing tactics from their bird's eye view. "They want to dart the matriarch first, the rest of the group will then surround her and become easier to hit," he says.

Elephant families have incredibly strong relationships: the females will stay together for life, helping one another with their young offspring and protecting one another from danger. "We always target cohesive family groups. The last thing the team wants is a lone elephant making a break for it and getting separated from the group," says Vickery.

Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve is near Lake Malawi. 

Flying low, vet Uys will take aim, targeting the fleshy backside of the matriarch through the cross hair of his dart gun, and fire. His aim is excellent, says Vickery, and within a few moments the majestic female will be down on the ground, lying on her side. One by one, Uys continues his work, aiming and darting the next eldest in the group, then the next, then the next, until only the youngest calf is left.

The first five minutes are critical – if an elephant falls badly it could die

"Uys is focusing on completing his task as quickly as possible in order to reduce the stress on the family group, but he also needs to be incredibly accurate to avoid harming the elephants," says Vickery.

Once the final dart has whooshed from the tranquilizer gun into the grey wrinkled bottom of the elephant calf and the whole family is down, Uys will radio down to the ground team, giving them the order to approach.

"At this point, I'll be waiting on the ground lined up with my team in a series of four-wheel drive cars," says Vickery. Until now, the team has maintained a safe distance. At this point, however, the race is on to reach the elephant group and ensure they are all lying on their sides and breathing normally, "The first five minutes are critical – if an elephant falls badly it could die, so time is of the essence," he says.

Elephants are first darted with tranquillisers from a helicopter. 

Once they receive the signal from the helicopter team, the ground squad will move across the grasslands in the direction of the elephants. "Recently, we were approaching a family and on nearing them, we noticed that one elephant, a mother with a young calf, had fallen on her front. With her entire eight-tonne weight crushing down on her, she could have suffocated in minutes. We leapt out of our cars and ran towards her, employing all our strength to roll her over."

Given their massive weights, a crane is needed

She was a big girl, and at first the team struggled to get the momentum to turn her. "Fortunately, she succumbed to the rocking motion and rolled over onto her side," says Vickery. As her rib cage expanded and contracted gently, the team could finally relax.

Once all the elephants are lying on their sides, paramedic Jeremy Hancock arrives to monitor the tranquilised elephants, and to ensure that their vital signs are normal.

Happy that they are stable, he will alert the team, at which point they begin the next stage – lifting the elephants onto the trucks.

Given their massive weights, a crane is needed to move them. One by one, robust slings will be attached to each elephant's foot to hoist them onto the back of an open sided truck, where they will be laid on their sides.

The vet and crew move to monitor the tranquillised elephants. 

The sight of an elephant hanging upside down from a crane is something the team are getting used to.
They have already moved 250 elephants in the past two months. Once all elephants are safely on board, the truck drives the gentle giants a few kilometres away, where they will be placed in recovery crates.

"The journey takes about 15 minutes, and on arrival each elephant is slid into the crate from the truck on a thick sheet," says Vickery. Once inside, the delicate process of administering an antidote and waking up the elephants takes place. "As each member of the family comes around, our team manoeuvres the transport trucks into position, lining them up so the herd can walk from one crate into the other."

The transport crates are chunky steel boxes, tall enough for the elephants to stand in. There are square gaps in the roof and sides to keep them cool. It is a somewhat chaotic process – these elephants are feisty creatures with strong personalities, and not all of them particularly want to enter the confines of a steel box. It can cause some grumbling and trumpeting.

Liwonde National Park is rich in wildlife. 

Although every effort is made to keep families together, sometimes there are a few frantic moments.
"Last week we were moving a family and the youngest calf remained in the recovery crate, confused and searching frantically for his mother. She was already in the transport vehicle, but noticed him looking stressed and walked back out to get him," recalls Vickery.

"She placed her trunk around his tiny body, and guided him into the transport crate with her. It just shows you how strong these family bonds are. This is the reason we make sure we catch full family units."

Once the whole elephant family are safely loaded, the team embark on a six-hour drive to the 60,000 hectare Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. Situated in the centre of the country near Lake Malawi,

Nkhotakota is a vast wilderness sliced up by a number of rivers that tumble down the edge of the escarpment as they make their way to Lake Malawi. The reserve is hilly, with tall grasses, woodland and some rainforest.

Jeremy Hancock, African Park's paramedic, monitors a tranquillised elephant on the ground.

At this stage, Uys joins the ground team to administer another tranquilliser, this time to keep their stress levels down. "It's like taking an anti-anxiety drug," Vickery explains. The elephants are still awake and can walk, but the drug helps calm them.

When the trucks arrive at Nkhotakota it is already dark. This is the point at which the herd will make their way out of the transport crates and into a holding boma, a small pen where Uys and the team can ensure they have recovered from their journey. "The next morning, the boma gates are opened and the family is released into the reserve, just 24 hours after the whole process began," Vickery says.

The team at African Parks are certain the elephants will thrive in their new environment because they have done this before. In 2003, they took over management of Majete Wildlife Reserve in southern Malawi and turned it from a barren wilderness into a thriving wildlife haven.

Elephants are tranquillised so they can be transported safely. 

 African Parks director of operations Andrew Parker explains that the area was very depleted when his team started managing the Majete area. "The community was ravaging the protected land for firewood, and the animals had been almost completely poached out."

Historically, elephants would have moved over huge ranges through Malawi

African Parks reintroduced nearly 2,500 animals, including elephants, and put measures in place so that the park could recover. "Now, there are nearly 15,000 animals [in Majete] and the park is thriving," he says.

Along with the translocation, a £1.1 million ($1.5 million) effort to fence Liwonde National Park is taking place. This is crucial to protect both humans and elephants, according to Liwonde National Park manager Craig Reid. "Historically, elephants would have moved over huge ranges through Malawi," he says.

"Sadly, however, the corridors elephants use to move around have been built on by people. Liwonde is a very small park in African terms. It is long and narrow, and surrounded by a high population of people. It's an ecological island in a sea of humanity."

The fence is needed to ensure the 550 elephants remaining in Liwonde are not harmed, and equally that elephants cannot harm the residents living on the park perimeters.

Elephants leaving the boma at Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve after their journey from Liwonde National Park.

The huge rise in population numbers is something that Parker sees as a fundamental challenge to our planet's remaining wildlife. "The real 'elephant in the room' is the issue of human population growth and the [resulting] destruction of natural capital," says Parker.

"It is just not sustainable and the conservation community – and indeed the global community – need to face up to the challenges presented by unbridled human population growth, not only for the future of biodiversity but for humanity's sake as well."

Unfortunately, it could take decades to come up with a solution to these global issues. By then it might be too late, elephants are at risk of being wiped out.

For now, translocation to safe reserves works, according to the African Parks team. It is being celebrated as a great solution and by doing things this way, the elephants get a new home where they do not need to stray for food.

At the same time, it reduces pressure on southern Malawi's ecosystem – farmers' crops stop being eaten, human-wildlife conflict reduces and northern Malawi gets a tourism influx as a result of the relocation. "Tourism currently accounts for about 8% of GDP in Malawi," says Patricio Ndadzela, African Parks Malawi country director, "We're aiming for 20 – 25%. By bringing back wildlife [and] managing parks, we'll create a critical mass that will bring tourists back to our country."

Vickery monitors the awake elephants in the transport truck before leaving for Nkhotakota. 

All of this also creates hundreds of jobs, Reid says. "The fence construction is being done by local communities only, [this project] alone will employ about 1,000 people.

"As tourism continues to improve we hope it will create upwards of 300 jobs at various lodges and parks across the country." These numbers are significant in Malawi, which ranked as the 18th least developed country in the world in a 2013 United Nations report.

Moving elephants this way is a fairly new concept. Previously, more sinister methods were used when elephant numbers were too high. "Culling was one of the few tools available in the past for the management of too many elephants. We set out to prove it's not the only solution," says Vickery.

"We could move thousands in a year if there was a place set up for it. This is about the bigger picture. We're proving to the world that, provided there's a safe haven to move the elephants to, culling is not necessary. This is the way forward."

Back in Liwonde National Park, when the helicopters soar away, life begins to return to normal. The remaining elephants can head to the river to bathe and drink. They will now have extra territory gained from the translocation of their neighbours.

While further north in Nkhotakota, the matriarch and her reunited family are now beginning their new life, in the safe haven of the national park.

Credits : The Country With Too Many Elephants
               By Harriet Constable
              BBC Earth September 12, 2016 

Gonarezhou National Park The Next Big Wildlife Destination

FYI -- Gonarezhou National Park is situated in South Eastern Zimbabwe. 

For decades Gonarezhou was considered too remote, virtually inaccessible to tourists. Besides, visitors want to see animals, and most had been shot out by hunters and poachers. But today, wildlife numbers here are booming.

The name Gonarezhou is generally accepted to mean ‘place of the elephant’, an apt description of this brooding low veld region of Zimbabwe. The 2014 aerial survey counted just over 11,000 in the park, up from 4000 in 1994.

Gonarezhou has more elephants than the whole of Mozambique, and one of the highest densities in Africa (at about two per square kilometre). And it gets better: the tuskers of Gonarezhou are the biggest in Zimbabwe, clearly sharing DNA with the famed large bulls in Kruger.

In 1979, Kabakwe was the legendary bull that was the first to be given special legal protection from hunting. One of the biggest of recent times (tusks of 45 kilograms each) was shot in the Malapati hunting area adjacent to Gonarezhou in October 2015. So the bulls with big ivory are still here, only there used to be far more of them.

Gonarezhou is not just about elephants. In 10 days African Lions were seen four times and heard their roars most nights, as well as the howls of spotted hyenas.  One also saw a pack of seven wild dogs and several pups; Gonarezhou has one of the strongest populations of these endangered carnivores, a dozen packs.

‘I never saw a lion or leopard for the first three years here,’ says Hugo van der Westhuizen, the park’s conservation manager for the past decade. ‘You’d wake up early in the morning and
there were hardly any animal sounds. It was depressing.’

Now, thanks to stringent anti-poaching measures, the animal statistics makes for reassuring reading.

The last predator survey in 2015 showed that there are approximately 125 lions, up from just 31 in 2009. Other predators have also increased significantly: 642 spotted hyenas (from 407), 279 wild dogs (from 30) and 90 cheetahs (from 22).

All herbivore species have increased significantly too. At the last count in 2014, there were 8000 impalas, 1700 kudus, 6000 Cape buffaloes, 1300 Burchell’s zebras, 900 wildebeest, 500 giraffes and 500 hippos.

Mana Pools has its albida forests alongside the Zambezi River.

Gonarezhou’s Chilojo Cliffs elicit a similar sense of wonder. Rising 200 metres above the floodplain of the broad Runde River, the 13-kilometre sandstone rampart is magnificent. It’s the defining feature of this remote wilderness.

Here the Runde flows south and seems to bump into the cliffs, then has to flow north to meet the narrow, powerful Save. Together, these rivers give the northern part of the park a unique sense of place. From the top of the cliffs, Gonarezhou’s diverse landscapes are clear to see.

Most obvious are the extensive floodplains alongside the Runde, which reminded me a little of those at Mana Pools at the opposite end of the country. The large Tembwahata Pan lies near the confluence of the two rivers and draws plenty of elephant, buffalo and other wildlife during the hot days.

Credits : Getaway Magazine South Africa 

Elephant Conservation Success Stories From The Republic Of The Congo

Not a Day passes without one hearing of the terribly tragic Mass Slaughter of Forest Elephant Herds specially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as in Gabon.

In Gabon's Minkebe National Park 25,000 Forest Elephants were slaughtered by Poachers in a 10 year period.

However, not all the news coming out of Central Africa is so bleak.

There is some good news too on the ground.

One bright spot has been the successful protection of Elephants in three national parks in the Republic of Congo. In each park — Nouabale - Ndoki, Odzala, and Conkouati — Elephant numbers have remained steady for almost a decade as poaching has been prevented and Elephants from surrounding logging concessions have sought refuge in these places of safety.

This is a testament to public-private collaboration and hard work. Each park is managed as a partnership between the Congo Government; local communities; donors such as the U.S. government, European Commission and private individuals; and an international NGO — the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Ndoki and Conkouati, and the African Parks Network in Odzala.

Elephant numbers in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park have held steady at around 2,400 animals since 2006. Odzala-Kokoua has maintained a population of about 8,000 since 2005. In Conkouati-Douli, elephant numbers have expanded by as much as 50 percent since 2010.

There, protection by vigilant ecoguards has enabled elephants to access forest resources in areas of the park they were too afraid to venture into a decade ago.

The future of Elephants in Africa depends first of all on bringing the immediate poaching crisis to an end through successful partnerships such as those described above.

Elephants’ long-term future depends as well on continuing to partner with local communities across Africa to minimize conflict between elephants and farmers, ensuring that wildlife benefits local people through ecotourism, and protecting elephant habitat — including corridors and dispersal areas.

Credits : Elephant Conservation Success Stories to Celebrate and Replicate

               By Dr Cristian Samper 

               Huffington Post  July 29, 2014

The Giant Eland African Antelope -- Are Its Days Numbered

The Giant Eland is an Antelope which is herbivorous eating Grasses and Branches of Trees all the time.

You could say that it is a "Browser" in more ways than one.

It is found in Savannah - Grassland Forests.

Giant Eland Antelopes are very wary and suspicious of Humans and at the slightest threat of danger from Humans or from Predators it can run at the speed of 60 odd kms an hour.

The Giant Eland Antelope can be found in a host of Central African Countries like Cameroon, The Central African Republic, and Chad to mention a few.

Mating and Birthing among Giant Eland Antelopes occurs throughout the Year but it is specially seen when the weather is wet.

Finally, Giant Eland Antelopes are known to live on the fringes of Sahara where not much water is available and hence they have learned to conserve the water content in their body.

They are "Critically Endangered" in a host of countries in Central Africa because of rampant poaching for its Skin and Meat as well as because of Habitat Destruction in these countries.

Malawi's Liwonde National Park

Life and Death in the wild can be sudden and dramatic. A golden dawn is rising to a chorus of birdsong in Malawi’s Liwonde National Park as antelopes graze and butterflies flit among lush grass, while a warthog laps quietly at a reedy brook. It is a bucolic African scene of peace and harmony. 

Then all hell breaks loose.

The water erupts as a prehistoric monster rears from the depths, seizes the hog’s head in massive jaws, and drags it squealing and thrashing to a watery grave.

The real battle begins when other crocodiles close in to fight for the prize. It lasts for hours as tourists watch from a game lodge metres away.

The day after the hog’s demise in Liwonde, I witness a heavyweight dispute between a hippo and an elephant. 

The hippo is splashing about in a river with its pals when a herd of elephants lumbers up to browse on the banks. This annoys the hippo, which roars from the water with jaws wide open in a ferocious display of anger.

The nearest elephant is unimpressed. It charges, trunk raised and ears flaring, and the hippo retreats to midstream, where it half submerges and glares balefully at its adversary. In nature, size matters.

Last week there was an even more dramatic spectacle here, as vets in helicopters fired tranquilliser darts to anaesthetise hundreds of elephants, the beginning of one of the largest animal translocations in history.

From Liwonde, the elephants are being taken by truck to another Malawian reserve as part of a $22 million rehabilitation project.

Malawi’s premier nature reserve has always had an impressive array of wildlife thanks to the Shire River, a mighty watercourse flowing from Lake Malawi to the Zambezi River that is the lifeblood of the park and its myriad denizens.

But it is about to become more diverse with the return of big cats as part of the ongoing rehabilitation initiative by African Parks, which is fencing the 130km perimeter, restocking the park with locally extinct species and relocating its surfeit of elephants.

Lions, Leopards, and Cheetahs will, in due course, roam Liwonde’s 518sq km of acacia woodland and riverine forests, black rhinos will be released from an enclosed sanctuary to join them, and neighbouring villagers are delighted that the fence will prevent the park’s remaining elephants from rampaging through their crops.

The non-profit African Parks organisation, based in South Africa with Dutch support, has already transformed Malawi’s Majete Wildlife Reserve and is including the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in its latest long-term initiative. 

The aim is to help Malawi become the next big safari destination.

“African Parks have given us hope,” says Samuel Chihana, my field guide at Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. “I remember when Majete was empty, it was all poached. Now the Big Five [rhino, elephant, buffalo, lion and leopard] are there and they will do the same here. And the lions will be part of the security against poachers.”

So far nobody has told thousands of impala, waterbuck and kudu grazing placidly in grasslands devoid of big predators that the lions are coming. As a result, a game drive in Liwonde, far from the crowds of big reserves in neighbouring countries, is a more intimate experience among animals that show only polite interest in us, except for the odd pachyderm.

Liwonde’s big advantage over the savannas of many African reserves is its river, which is a haven for countless hippos, elephants, crocodiles, antelopes and birdwatchers. More than 400 species of birds have been recorded flitting around the lagoons, marshes and woodlands, including a couple of wire-tailed swallows that cheekily hitch rides on the bows of boats leaving Mvuu Lodge.

There are hippos everywhere, congregating sociably in half-submerged groups, and occasionally a scarily huge Nile crocodile slithers from the banks. It is safe to assume that anything in the Shire River resembling a half-sunken log is alive and dangerous. 

We are paying close attention to one of these monster reptiles when a surfacing hippo blunders into us, causing even the hitchhiking swallows a brief flutter of concern. Fortunately our boat is bigger than the hippo.

Cruising a sedate river within metres of wild creatures unconcerned by our presence makes an agreeable change from bouncing around dirt tracks on safari drives in arid savanna for hours. 

There are wonders of nature at every turn, from fish eagles gazing imperiously from a jackal berry tree to waterbuck wading in lagoons, and a green-backed heron fishing with a grasshopper for bait.

And soon the lions will come. 

A carnivore research project at Liwonde, supported by Britain’s Bristol University, reckons the park has enough bush meat to support at least one pride of about 10 lions, although researcher Buffy Smith admits they may change the game-viewing experience.

“It’s quite nice there are no predators at present, because you can get closer to the antelopes and warthogs,” says Smith. “The best thing here is it’s a bit more difficult to get to, so you have the park pretty much to yourself and you see all the game without five other vehicles around you. In the dry season you can have 20 elephants swimming across the river, and you are in a boat beside them.”

The dry season is also when guests can join morning walks tracking black rhinos in a woodland sanctuary at Liwonde. 

Krisztian Gyongyi, a Hungarian ecologist supervising the rhino conservation project, is hugely encouraged by the African Parks initiative. He is planning to introduce more rhinos to enhance the genetic pool, and says simply, “This place is a national treasure.”

The hippos would probably agree, although hearing them shuffling and grunting around the lodge at night can be unnerving at first. Then you get used to it, and look forward to the breakfast entertainment of swallows swarming around giant baobab trees, and waiters with catapults chasing marauding vervet monkeys.

A memory that lingers is the haunting whistle of a little bird called the tropical boubou echoing in the forest at dawn. It is like a call from the spirit world. Many local villagers have been summoned to that world prematurely after close encounters with hippos and crocodiles.

The golden rules are never to come between a hippo and the river … and don’t even think about going for a swim.

There are no such hazards a few kilometres away on the Zomba plateau, a towering 1830 Metre escarpment swathed in exuberant forest alive with birdsong. 

Admittedly, there are leopards, but they keep pretty much to themselves. Tom and Petal, an enterprising British couple who run Zomba Forest Lodge halfway up the mountain, usually can tell when there is a big cat around.

“If the dogs sniff the air and refuse to go out, we know there is a leopard in the woods,” Tom says.

Credits : The Australian

Hwange's Elephant Super Herds

FYI -- Hwange National Park is situated in Zimbabwe.

Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe is home to one of the largest elephant populations in Africa. There are an estimated 44,000 pachyderms inhabiting the 14,651 km² park, which is practically half of Zimbabwe’s elephant population.

The Elephants are the most important animals in the park, making up 90 % of the biomass. The park is lacking in natural surface water so during the dry season the animals, including the elephants, rely on man-made pans of calcium rich water pumped from boreholes.

In Hwange National Park, one of southern Africa’s greatest elephant sanctuaries, herds of up to 350 can be found. These massive, abnormally large herds are known as ‘super herds’ and are unique to the area.

Observing a super herd at the watering hole is a truly mesmerising experience, guests at Elephants Eye at Hwange, an eco-lodge on a borderless concession neighbouring the park, find themselves lost for hours in wonderment at the interaction and activity of the majestic creatures.

Where else can you see literally hundreds of elephants splashing and spouting, using their dexterous trunks to take grateful gulps from the fresh water?

The younger elephants specially are a delight to witness. The calves are playful and exploratory, mucking about and rolling around in the mud under the watchful eyes of the mature cows. The respected matriarch is alert and in control, she has led the herd to the waterhole and their safety is her main priority.

In larger herds, specially a super herd, the matriarch needs assistance from the other mature cows. It is here where the elephants’ renowned complex social structure comes into play. The herd is in constant communication and can even transmit messages over great distances through low-frequency sounds and rumblings, creating vibrations in the ground that are felt by their feet.

In all herds, regardless of their size, the elephants intimately know one another and have incredibly strong bonds, this is essential for their safety and provides a great deal of trust and a sanctuary within the herd.

It is then all the more impressive that these super herds of Hwange ranging from 150 to 350 strong are able to successfully maintain these close-knit relationships.

The specific conditions that cause these impressively large herds are not known, but they certainly are favourable. It may be the boreholes that provide fresh water year round, it may be the vast area of mopani woods and grasslands or something else entirely about Zimbabwe’s biggest national park in the northwest corner of the country.

Whatever it is, it is amazing to see elephants thrive and proliferate in numbers that echo an era when elephant populations were exponentially larger than what they are now.

Sadly, Elephants remain threatened throughout Africa due to habitat loss and poaching, even the elephants in Hwange National Park, though seemingly abundant, are under threat. Their best protection is to provide safe spaces in which they can flourish, these are the parks and reserves of Africa that are supported by tourism.

A visit to Hwange National Park will not only provide you with a truly unique elephant experience, but the revenue generated will indirectly ensure that these magnificent creatures have a home and a protected space to roam for future generations.

Credits : Africa Geographic September 12, 2017 

The Return of Rhinos to North Luangwa National Park

Forty years ago, Zambia had the third largest black rhino population in Africa: around 12,000, with 4,000 of them in the Luangwa Valley. 

Twenty years later there were none. 

They were declared extinct in Zambia in 1998. 

They had been poached out of existence in the 1970s and 1980s to meet illegal commercial markets. 

They were wanted as horns for dagger-handles, and the Chinese Medicine Trade has an immense and expanding appetite for them. Rhino horn is believed to help relieve fevers and disorders of the blood; it’s not used as an aphrodisiac, though the myth dies hard in the West.

 So how long do you have to wait for a flight of rhinos?

The answer is five years. They came in not under their own power, but by Hercules aircraft. Five of them landed in North Luangwa National Park in 2003, five years after the declared national extinction, rather longer since the last rhino was killed for its horn in Zambia.

The North Luangwa Conservation Programme (NLCP) had taken four years of preparation to set up, but now the great adventure was on, a glorious attempt to put the toothpaste back in the tube. 

It was established by Frankfurt Zoological Society, and it receives funding from organisations that include Save the Rhino, which is based in London. 

Ten more rhinos came to North Luangwa in 2006, five more in 2008, and another five two years later. 

That meant that by 2011, there were 25 rhinos in a well-watched and well-guarded area of 220 square kilometres. They were kept in protected circumstances, initially in a boma, or timber-walled enclosure.

Now the population is free-ranging, protected by the vigilance of people on the ground. 

Circumstances are not entirely natural – at least not yet – and the project will supply lucerne and sausage-fruit to animals in sub-optimal condition and to lactating females.

It’s not been straightforward. It never is. The process makes considerable demands on the animals involved. They’re not machines: the flight is difficult and the instant change of environment is traumatic. 

Such things can be hard for domestic animals, as horse-people will tell you. For wild animals, not selectively bred for docility, there will always be problems.

Some rhinos found it harder to make the change than others. Others possibly contracted trypanosomiasis, from the tsetse flies that favour the Valley and so make it a no-go area for cattle farmers – which is the reason the habitat has remained in such good shape for so long. 

Others died in fights. And in the traumatic year of 2011, six of the rhinos died: more than 15% of the population. “It was one of the hottest and driest years on record,” says Claire Lewis, technical adviser for the NLCP. “All wild animals suffer under such extreme conditions. It was hugely disappointing, but we had to be pragmatic about it.”

That is the problem with all small populations: there is no such thing as a small disaster. The project is still a fragile thing: it wouldn’t take much to lose the lot, at the cost of a good deal of money and great deal more hope. 

A mother of a three-month-old calf was found dead and the calf never seen again. Such things are hard to deal with for the people on the ground.

There was easy consolation to be found: six more calves were born. There is now a population of 34 black rhinos in North Luangwa National Park, and it’s time to think about expanding.

At the time of writing, and in the entire history of the project, not a single rhino has been lost to poaching. 

This is a kind of miracle: and it comes from hard work, high motivation and considerable skills.

Credits : News Week