Three years ago, a section ranger discovered a male black rhino wandering in circles in the Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape. Lions were readying to pounce.
The park’s veterinary team was called in. They discovered that the rhino was completely blind. He had two detached retinas after being injured in a territorial fight.
“He was immediately moved to the safety of a boma in the park while his future was debated,” said the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation, a wildlife conservation nonprofit organisation created by the actor and conservationist of the same name. “It was suggested that he should be euthanised, as the cost of protecting him would be unrealistically high.”
The alternative was to let nature run its course. In Munu’s case, this would mean releasing him back into the park, where he would almost certainly fall prey to the lions or perish from a lack of water and nutrition.
Rare subspecies
Then, conservationist Brett Barlow heard of Munu’s plight and stepped in. “He was part of Addo and he was their dominant bull and he just had too many fights,” said Barlow. “So basically like a boxer — he had had one too many punches.”
Black rhinos are critically endangered, but Munu is a South-Western black rhino, a rare subspecies of the breed. He is one of only 254 remaining in the wild in South Africa. “I told my friend who told me about Munu that there’s only 254 of these rhinos left … and that we have to make a plan,” Barlow said.
“My friend said: ‘We can’t, as we’ve never done this before.’ I said: ‘We will’.”
Munu, who is about 20 years old, is now being cared for at Mantis Founders Lodge in the Eastern Cape in two specially designed enclosures. Keeping him safe is costly, according to Barlow, who adds that the animal is “amazing and is doing very well”.
“We have 24-hour armed guards, two full-time rangers, thermal-imaging cameras, perimeter cameras, armed-response teams all in operation already to keep him and the rhino on the reserve safe. We have also recently added a K-9 unit to the team,” Barlow said.
As a deterrent to poaching, Munu was recently dehorned. “Everything went smoothly,” Barlow says. “We have to remember that he’s obviously very special and because he is in an enclosed environment it can make him a bigger target than a normal free-ranging black rhino … That’s why we have to take these extra measures.”
‘Sleep, eat, drink repeat
At night, Munu is kept in a smaller enclosure; during the day, he’s got a free-ranging area he can walk out of. He is fenced in, but has a large area to walk around in.
“The nice thing about black rhinos is that they are solitary animals. But also the only reason they move around is for food, water and women,” says Barlow with a laugh. “So he’s got food and water and no females near him, so he won’t pick up the scent. He’s happy as long as he’s got enough food and water there: he’ll just lie down, sleep, eat, drink and repeat.”
For the past two years, the foundation has worked closely with Barlow, South African National Parks (SANParks) and Mantis Founder’s Lodge to protect Munu. The purpose of its programme, funded by the foundation and Barlow, is to breed Munu to “ensure his progeny can play a critical role in repopulating the areas decimated by poaching, and to protect the genetic diversity that is mission-critical in the protection of a species with such few numbers in the wild”.
Dehorning: ‘Deeply emotional’
Elizabeth said the decision to dehorn Munu and surrounding rhinos was made to remove any attractiveness for any poacher, given that “Munu is unable to fend for himself as an able-bodied rhino and run from a threat.”
“It is a deeply emotional experience and obviously intrusive for the animal. Although the horn does regrow, we are altering the nature of nature,” she said. “Rhinos need their horns and deserve to have them, as nature intended. But we are being pushed to the extreme and this extreme measure, where appropriate, can be a powerful tool in the war to keep our natural heritage safe.”
“He is like our little boy,” Elizabeth said. “If you just spend a few minutes with him, you fall in love with him. He’s like a big puppy dog. He knows his name; he comes when you call him. He has his moods — if he’s hungry he lets you know. If he doesn’t like something, he lets you know. It’s just the sweetest thing. I’ve never seen this kind of behaviour from a rhino before, I’ve never spent time with them like this.”
Black rhinos are browsers, munching from trees. “So we have one or two carers, depending on the day, who will cut tree branches for him and hang them twice a day around his boma and we switch up the different types of trees to keep it interesting for him,” Elizabeth said. “We’ll move the different areas that they hang just to change his routine for him.”
Saving rhinos from the axe
According to the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation, although there are suggestions of a decline in the number of rhinos poached in state-owned parks, “these successes are perhaps not a fair indication of the problem that remains”.
With fewer rhinos to poach, rhinos are more difficult to find. “As anti-poaching measures improve, particularly in Kruger National Park, syndicates are targeting private properties around the country,” the foundation said.
The Eastern Cape has not been immune to this onslaught and, together with KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape, has seen a rise in poaching-related activity, mostly on private land. “The future of the country’s rhinos remains precarious with little sign of optimism,” the foundation noted.
Owning rhinos is an extremely expensive enterprise, most notably the costs of keeping them secure and safe from the poacher’s axe. “Private rhino owners have had to react quickly to curb the increased threat their rhinos face,” the foundation said.
Symbol of hope
Munu is a symbol of hope, according to the foundation, as a “representation of what can be achieved through compassion and perseverance”.
Barlow agreed. “It’s a big responsibility to keep him safe. But it’s really humbling and such an honour. It’s the first time SANParks ever had an intervention for an animal. They’ve always had the policy that nature has to take its course and that they are custodians and carers and not going to step in.
“When we eventually said to them, ‘It’s a Diceros bicornis bicornis, we have to do something’, they agreed. It took us about eight months trying to figure out how to do it: eventually they came to the party really nicely and we found a way of doing it and it was done. It’s a huge success not just for me and for Munu, [but] also for SANParks and it shows their willingness and desire to help.”
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