A team of rangers captured, drugged and transported black and white rhinos more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) into Mozambique’s Zinave National Park, which has more than 400,000 hectares and more than 2,300 other reintroduced animals.
“The rhinos are important to the ecosystem, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re moving them all this distance and making all this effort to get them there,” Kester Vickery, an ecologist who oversees the displacement of the rhinoceros.
The Peace Foundation (PPF) conservation group, which is running the operation, aims to transport more than 40 rhinos over the next two years to Mozambique.
Its project manager, Anthony Alexander, said the team had already brought some raptors and many elephants into the park, and now it was the rhinos’ turn.
Workers guide a calm rhino into a container during the relocation of the first 19 white rhinos from South Africa to Zinave National Park in Mozambique. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko The Peace Parks Foundation conservation group aims to transport more than 40 rhinos over the next two years to Mozambique. REUTERS/Siphiwe SibekoKester Vickery, co-founder of Conservation Solutions, tends to a calm rhino.REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
“It’s very exciting now to complete the presence of historical species in the park,” Alexander said.
This initiative is part of a campaign to save endangered species by relocating them to safe havens where they have a chance to increase their population.
“We’re effectively spreading our eggs and putting them in different baskets,” Vickery said, adding that he hopes to see a thriving white rhino population at Zinave in 10 years.
Mozambican Environment Minister Ivete Maibaze said in a statement that this historic shift will also be beneficial to the country’s emerging ecotourism industry.
Mozambique’s wildlife numbers have been severely affected by a 15-year civil war that ended in 1992 and by poaching.
