Home > Destinations > Africa > Botswana > Regional
News > White Rhino Return to Vumbura Plains
Friday, February 29, 2008
White Rhino Return to Vumbura Plains
Julia Nesbitt
On the morning of June 23, 2008, a guide from Vumbura Plains (NG 22 private concession of the Okavango Delta) announced his discovery of white rhino tracks on the road over the radio. His announcement was met with disbelief, as rhino have not been seen in the area in nearly 20 years! However the guide stuck to his guns and insisted that they were rhino tracks, something that confirmed a report a couple of months ago by the manager of Little Vumbura of rhino tracks near the airstrip.
Over the next few hours a small team of guides and trackers followed the fresh prints on foot into an area of the reserve without a road network. The tracks led them to a pan where there was evidence that two rhino had recently rested and dust bathed. Eventually they sighted two rhinos grazing in an open area. The team perched on a nearby termite mound and observed them but no ear notch identifications were possible. After only 15 minutes the wind changed direction and the rhinos picked up the tracking team's scent and ran off a short distance before slowly moving off in an easterly direction.
The next day the team was joined by Poster Mpho (rhino monitor at Mombo) and Glynis Humphrey (conservation ecologist in Maun) with the telemetry tracking equipment and ear notch charts to identify the animals. After searching all day, fresh tracks were finally spotted in the late afternoon. One visual of an ear spotted by a prancing tracker, signaled the teams success!
Two white rhino in line of sight, a cow and a young bull, both in excellent condition. Furthermore, they had no ear notches, indicating that they are not individuals from the group that was relocated to Botswana in 2001. Thus, this may be the first sighting of naturally roaming white rhinos in Botswana since 1992, when the last wild ranging rhino were moved to the Kgama Rhino Sanctuary. The speculation is that these animals may have come from Zimbabwe.
The white rhino would not exist today if it were not for the work of a few determined people in the late 1990s, who brought together the 200 or so individuals surviving, for a managed breeding and re-introduction program. Today, there are estimated to be 12,100 Southern white rhinos. This sighting marks an exciting moment in the conservation of both the white rhino and the continuing protection of the Okavango Delta.
News source: Wilderness Safaris
