Protect and Save the life of Our Rhinos

Hello to all our supporters, 

We have had some wonderful developments since our last update. For those of you who have been following our journey over the years you will be familiar with the “Lucky Five”. This is the nickname we gave to the first five rhino orphans that we rescued, rehabilitated and successfully released back into the wild. 

In conservation the concept of success is tricky to measure. In terms of our rescued orphans we believe that the question of success goes further than just the life of the orphan that was saved, once that individual is again contributing to increasing the wild population this is the moment that we believe we can say we have made a difference to more than an individual life, a difference to the survival of a species. 

This year has been a huge milestone for each of the Lucky Five rhinos. The three bulls have each established their own territories and we have observed them mating with other wild rhinos on the reserve. Both of the females have again successfully mated with wild bulls and gave birth to their third and second respective calves in April and August this year! This is an extraordinary point to have reached. Of the first five orphans that came into our care each one is now directly contributing to increasing the wild rhino population. They continue to thrive and flourish in the wild. It is humbling to see how dedicated the females are with their calves, showing incredible patience and care that was stolen from them by their brutal starts to life. 

Our current work centres around keeping the wild rhino population on the reserve safe. Our days are filled with anti-poaching patrols, surveillance cameras, and in person checks on the rhinos to confirm how they are doing. Being a new mother is a stressful time for any species and with the super El-Niño forecast it is critical that we can regularly assess each rhino’s health and body condition. We use technology to help us with this as much as possible and we are currently raising funds for additional security infrastructure for the reserve. The new technology will raise the alarm the instant a gunshot is detected and will allow us to deploy state of the art tracking devices revealing the intricacies of the rhinos daily lives in-between our sightings. The collars will be used both to protect the rhinos and to contribute to the vital research that we are carrying out into the effects on rhino behaviour and social dynamics of long-term horn trimming (one of the most effective anti-poaching tools we have available to us). 

Thank-you to each and everyone who continues to support our work. Conservation cannot happen in isolation - as they say in Africa, it takes a village!