Nonprofit African Parks buys rhino breeding farm in re-wilding venture

African Parks has purchased the world’s largest captive rhino breeding operation in a bid to rescue and re-wild the rhino to safe and well-managed protected areas across Africa.

This comes after the owner of the farmland, John Hume, failed to receive a bid for the 7,800-hectare property near Klerksdorp in the North West when it went up for auction earlier this year.

There are an estimated 2,000 rhino on the land. Hume was breeding them and had unsuccessfully lobbied for the legalisation of the trade in rhino horns. These regrow after being sawn off from live animals. Hume said previously the high feed costs and anti-poaching measures required were unsustainable without the horn trade being permitted.

African Parks, a conservation NGO that manages 22 protected areas in partnership with a dozen governments on the continent, said it intends to re-wild these rhino over the next 10 years “to well-managed and secure areas, establishing or supplementing strategic populations”.

The breeding programme will be phased out and the project will end once all the rhino are released into the wild.

“African Parks had no intention of being the owner of a captive rhino breeding operation with 2,000 rhino. However, we fully recognise the moral imperative of finding a solution for these animals so that they can once again play their integral role in fully functioning ecosystems,” said Peter Fearnhead, CEO of African Parks. “The scale of this undertaking is simply enormous, and therefore daunting. However, it is equally one of the most exciting and globally strategic conservation opportunities. We will be working with multiple governments, funding partners and conservation organisations, who are committed to making this rewilding vision a reality.”

Barbara Creecy, minister of forestry, fisheries and environment, said the government would support African Parks and other partners with technical and scientific advice. This would be with the aim of “developing a conservation solution that includes translocating the animals over a period of time to suitable parks and community conservancies in South Africa and on the African continent”.

African Parks said the white rhino as a species is under extreme pressure, especially in South Africa, because of poaching. Rhino historically consisted of two subspecies: the southern white and the northern white. The northern white is functionally extinct, with just two non-breeding females in captivity in Kenya. There are less than 13,000 southern white rhino.

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