Safari Holidays to South Africa and Namibia for independent travellers.

The desert-adapted black rhino in the arid north-west of Namibia are the only rhino world-wide that have survived on communal land with no formal conservation status.

However, they are undoubtedly the most critically endangered mammal in Africa today. The black rhino has been hunted mercilessly in most countries where it once occurred, and at least 96 per cent of the population has been eliminated.

In the early 1980s, poaching in this northern area of Namibia was an immense problem, and the rhino numbers reached near extinction. 

A group of concerned people (scientists; geologists; community leaders; nature conservation officials; farmers; journalists; housewives and businessmen) gathered together to form a Trust fund.  The aim of this Trust was to stop the horrendous slaughter of these magnificent animals. 

Collaboration with Government and Local Communities

Within a few years, and with the help of international funds, the Save the Rhino Trust was started.

Ever since the Trust was formed, collaboration with the Government and the local community has been achieved, with the aim to provide security for the rhino, to monitor the rhino population in the region, and to bring benefit to the community through conservation and tourism.

Photographic Census

Apart from the regular monitoring work, a complete photographic census of all the rhino in the area was completed in 1992 and again in 1997/98.  During these censuses all information on the rhino, as well as accurate locations of all springs and waterholes, were recorded. 

Over the years, the tracking teams have photographed and identified every rhino in the 25,000 km²; every new calf born is recorded, as are all mortalities. This monitoring effort needs to be constantly maintained, as the rhino population grows and rhino change appearance over a time period. 

Since the start of the Save the Rhino Trust, the rhino numbers in the Kunene/Erongo regions have more than doubled.