Due to continued poaching for their horns for the illegal wildlife trade, and ongoing habitat loss, southern white rhinos are listed as near threatened on the IUCN Red List. However, these gains were quickly lost, as more than 50% of the global population, around 12,000 rhinos, have been poached in the last ten years alone. The southern white rhino population reached an all-time low of 30 to 40 animals in the 1930’s, but due to extensive conservation measures, and through an initiative in the 1960’s, known as ‘Operation Rhino’, they increased to approximately 20,000 individuals by 2010. Southern white rhinos are one of two remaining subspecies of white rhinos the other is the northern white rhino of which only two captive females remain, making it functionally extinct. Once returned to protected areas across Africa, these rhinos will contribute to wild ecosystems by providing nutrient cycling, storing carbon, and increasing tourism revenue for local people. The benefits of rewilding 2,000 southern white rhinos, estimated to be up to 15% of the total remaining wild population, during the most critical decade for conservation will be immense. © Brent Stirton/Getty Images Rhinos Symbolise Healthy Wild Ecosystems Given African Parks’ track record in creating safe wild spaces, and experience in carrying out wildlife relocations at scale from moving 500 elephants across Malawi, to bringing rhino back to Rwanda, Malawi and most recently, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, we agreed to requests from the NGO, governmental and philanthropic sectors to provide a solution to this potential conservation crisis. Having failed to receive any bids, the rhinos were facing serious risk of poaching and fragmentation, as they most certainly would have been sold off incrementally as part of a liquidation process and would have been lost to conservation forever. The Challenge to Save 2,000 RhinoĪs a result of financial stress, a private captive rhino breeding operation, “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 the 26th of April, 2023. Our vision 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.Ĭlick here to read the press release. African Parks is now the official custodian of 2,000 southern white rhino, with one, clear intent: to rewild these rhinos over the next ten years.