Tusk Trust - Moremi Game Reserve

Moremi Game Reserve

Project Location: Ngamiland District, Botswana

Type of Project: Habitat & Wildlife Conservation

Endangered species: White Rhino (38) and Black Rhino (4)

Land under protection: 35000 sq km

No. local people benefiting from project: 30,000

Background
As with many countries throughout Africa, Botswana’s rhino population has been decimated. However in the Okavango Delta a team of people from Wilderness Safaris and the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks have succeeded in re-introducing white and black rhino into the Delta. In 2001 the first four white rhino were released into the Moremi Game Reserve with funding from Tusk Trust. Symbolically these rhino were sourced from within captive populations in Botswana, three from Mokolodi Game Reserve (another Tusk sponsored project) and one from the Gaborone Game Reserve.

A further 22 rhino arrived as a result of an innovative ‘rhino-for-roan’ swap between South Africa and Botswana. The project suffered a setback in 2003 when two rhino were killed by poachers, however within a week of the incident, security was upgraded, the poachers were caught and three new rhino released. Since then no rhino have been lost and eleven rhino calves have been born, all to mothers released in the programme.

The classification of the black rhino as 'locally extinct' became redundant in October 2003, when the first four black rhino - two males and two females - were released into the Okavango Delta. Since then, other negotiations include the 'sable-for-black-rhino' deal between the South African and Botswana governments, and with Zimbabwe to translocate black rhino across the border.

Rhino Monitoring Programme
The wild areas of northern Botswana stretch from the Namibian border in the west to the Zimbabwe borders in the east, and comprise somewhere in the region of 150,000 km2 of terrain, much of which is inaccessible. The rhino, black and white have been released into this area where monitoring is not Poster Malongwa, who coordinates the monitoring, is, in this difficult terrain able to find the rhino that have established home ranges within the Okavango and Moremi region once a month. The rest have dispersed over a wider area, as anticipated, and are not seen as often. To ensure their safety a community education program has been established around and within the delta, with the aim of the people of Ngamiland "taking ownership" of the rhinos.

Comments from the field

Moremi is an ideal location for the re-introduction of rhino, in that the relative success of Botswana economically and politically, combined with the wide occurrence of wildlife tourism, has contributed to extremely low levels of poaching and wildlife related crimes. Therefore the rhino have started breeding very well in the wild as they are under no stress from hunting and the habitats are still completely intact. The ongoing monitoring of the released rhinos for biological management, as well as the further planned import of black rhinos are supported in a major way by the TUSK trust. Transport and telemetry equipment vital to the success of the project have only been purchased because of that support. Without this funding we would still be struggling with outdated equipment.

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