Save the Rhino Trust, Namibia

Location: Northwest of Kunene and Erongo Region Project leader: Rudi Loutit Project partner: Save The Rhino Trust Rhino species: Black rhino (Diceros bicornis bicornis) Rhino numbers: Confidential Size of protected area: 25,000 km2 Activities: monitoring, translocations, community game guard training, wildlife-based tourism Support:  We focus on Save the Rhino Trust’s ongoing core costs (salaries, vehicle running costs etc) as well as on its community game guard training programme, and we recently raised funds for the purchase and installation of solar panels at the main base Funding partners: US Fish and Wildlife Service, Ashden Trust, Rhino Cycle Namibia teams, Save Foundation (Australia)

Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) is an indigenous non-governmental organisation based in the Kunene in the arid northwest of Namibia, founded in 1982 in response to the large scale poaching of rhino and other species of wildlife for profit. Comprised of a group of local people and conservationists concerned about the destruction of their country’s wildlife, they began a collaborative effort to protect the remaining desert-adapted black rhino and encourage its recovery.

The Kunene Region is home to the largest concentration of black rhino on earth to survive on land that has no formal conservation status. The African Rhino Specialist Group (AfRSG) rates the desert rhino population of northwest Namibia as a Key 1 Population, representing the only desert-specific population of black rhino (Diceros bicornis bicornis) in the world. Given that there are only five Key 1 populations throughout Africa, SRT’s rhino conservation work in the Kunene Region is clearly hugely important, on both a national and international level. Most impressively, the census currently being performed by SRT estimates that it will treble in numbers in 25 years.

SRT works closely with the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), and has a mandate to protect the black rhino population of the country. SRT’s main work comprises of four teams of trackers, who cover the 25,000 km2 of the region on a monthly rotational basis in order to deter poachers and constantly monitor the population. As well as recording the identification and position of individual rhino, the teams also conduct mini-censuses of the population every few months, and a full census every five years, including mortalities, births, age/sex breakdown and sub-populations. This is one of the longest running and most comprehensive datasets on a population, and is invaluable not only to monitor the Kunene population, but also to enable research into biological management techniques and rhino ecology.

One outcome of the dataset is that it shows the growth of the Namibian population is slowing. Current research suggests that this is due to the population reaching ecological carrying capacity, and further strong growth is therefore unlikely in the present range. However, the species is still listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, so further action is desirable to continue the success of the species recovery. In keeping with the National Black Rhino Strategy (see Appendix I), expansion of range is one of the most important goals for rhino recovery.

In conjunction with SRT, MET is running a translocation program that aims to restore the desert-adapted rhino to its former habitat, establishing metapopulations that will increase the likelihood of survival of the species, as well as encourage further growth in both the source and founder populations. In 2008, 32 black rhino were translocated (15 males, 15 females and two calves); 20 animals were fitted with horn transmitters in the Kunene Region; and a further 33 animals were earnotched in Waterberg Plateau Park (some white rhinos) and the Kaross – both of these outside SRT’s area of work. The plan for 2009 includes further activities affecting SRT’s work, including the establishment of two new rhino populations in Communal Conservancies, each of involving the translocation of six rhinos.