After 40 years of extinction, rhinos return to Mozambique
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Loading... - Offusu Gyamfi
- 23 Aug 2022
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A group of rangers captured, sedated and moved black and white rhinos over 1,000 miles (1,610 km) to Mozambique’s Zinave National Park, which has over 400,000 hectares and more than 2,300 other reintroduced animals.
“Rhinos are important to the ecosystem, which is one of the reasons why we’re moving them all this distance and doing all this effort to get them there,” Kester Vickery, a conservationist who is supervising the rhino translocation told Reuters.
The Peace Parks Foundation (PPF) conservation group, which is conducting the operation, aims to relocate over 40 rhinos in the next two years to Mozambique.
Its project manager, Anthony Alexander, said that the group has already brought in certain predators and many elephants to the park and that it was now rhinos’ turn.
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A horn of a tranquillised rhino pierces through a fence, during the relocation of the first 19 white rhinos from South Africa to Zinave National Park in Mozambique, in Lephalale in the Limpopo province, South Africa, May 30, 2022. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
This initiative is a part of a campaign to save the endangered species by relocating them to safe havens where they have a chance to increase their population.
“We are effectively spreading our eggs and putting them in different baskets,” Vickery said, adding that he hoped to see a thriving population of white rhinos in Zinave in 10 years.
Mozambican Environment Minister Ivete Maibaze said in a statement that this historic translocation will also be beneficial for the country’s emerging eco-tourism industry. Read More...
