Conservationists Purchase Largest Rhino Project
African Parks has acquired the world's largest white rhino breeding project with more than 2,000 white rhinoceroses. The animals are to be rewilded over the course of ten years.
The more than 2,000 white rhinoceroses are to be rewilded into protected areas over the next ten years.
The conservation organisation African Parks has acquired the world's largest rhino breeding project. The more than 2,000 white rhinoceroses are to be rewilded over the next ten years, as the organisation announced. It is the largest project of its kind ever undertaken in Africa.
At the end of April, private individual John Hume auctioned off his rhino breeding project “Platinum Rhino” in the northwest of South Africa. More than 2,000 endangered white rhinoceroses live on the 8,500-hectare farm — representing around twelve percent of the estimated 16,000 white rhinoceroses worldwide. Immediately after the auction, no information was available as to whether the event had been successful.
The 81-year-old Hume had been breeding white rhinoceroses for more than 30 years. Hume's stated goal was to reverse the declining numbers of these animals on the continent.
The breeding programme would be discontinued and the project concluded once all the rhinos had been released into the wild, said African Parks CEO Peter Fearnhead. “We are aware of the moral imperative to find a solution for these animals so that they can once again play their integral role in fully functioning ecosystems.”
The conservation organisation would work with several governments, funding partners and conservation partners to rewild the rhinos into multiple protected areas across Africa. This was a “tremendous undertaking,” said Fearnhead. At the same time, it represented one of the most exciting and globally significant opportunities to advance conservation.
