African Parks buys rhino breeding farm in re-wilding venture

African Parks has bought the world’s largest captive rhino breeding operation in a bid to rescue and re-wild the animals in 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 7,800ha property near Klerksdorp in the North West when it went on auction earlier this year.

There are about 2,000 rhinos 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 rhinos 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 rhinos are released into the wild.

African Parks had no intention of being the owner of a captive rhino breeding operation with 2,000 rhinos, its CEO Peter Fearnhead said.

“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,” Fearnhead said.

“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,” he said.

Barbara Creecy, minister of forestry, fisheries & 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 SA and on the African continent”.

African Parks said the white rhino species is under extreme pressure, especially in SA, because of poaching. Rhinos 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 fewer than 13,000 southern white rhinos.