News

Rewilding – African Parks Takes the Lead

Added – 12/02/2024

Rewilding is a concept which has gained popularity recently and involves a broad range of concepts and initiatives.  It can include rehabilitation of degraded land and habitat and presents opportunities to mitigate environmental impacts and then to go further by re-introducing species.  It may even extend to climate change and sustainability initiatives.  Therefore, it’s a very broad concept with huge potential and has even been termed progressive or sustainable conservation.

With its incredible biodiversity and mega-fauna, Africa presents amazing opportunities in this regard.  One such initiative which has been groundbreaking is the rewilding of 2000 southern white rhinos.

The rhino story will be familiar to many who follow African conservation, as these rhinos, the result of a private captive rhino breeding operation, have been looking for a sustainable home for a few years.

Eventually and mainly as a result of financial stress, “Platinum Rhino”, in the North West Province of South Africa, which held in excess of 2,000 white rhino, was put up for auction on 26 April 2023. Having failed to receive any bids, the rhinos were facing serious risk of poaching and fragmentation, as they may have been sold off incrementally as part of a liquidation process and would have been lost to conservation forever.

African Parks came to the rescue and in September 2023 became the official custodian of 2,000 southern white rhino, with one, clear intent: to rewild these rhinos over the next ten years.

African Parks’ vision for the rhino is “to translocate them to multiple well-managed protected areas across Africa, establishing or supplementing strategic populations, helping to secure the future of the species across Africa.”

Credits and for more information:
www.africanparks.org