Looking Back on 2011 – Zimbabwe Reflections

Back in mid 2008, the year in which poachers killed a staggering 16.6% of the black rhino population in the Lowveld conservancies, a black rhino cow called Teressa and her two month old calf Joseph narrowly escaped becoming part of this tragic statistic. An incursion by rhino poachers had been detected in Bubye Valley Conservancy and as part of the follow up Lowveld Rhino Trust rhino monitors checked on all the rhinos in that particular area. Teressa was found unable to stand due to a bullet wound to her right shoulder – she had been shot with a silenced 30 caliber rifle. Not able to get to water or  food sources, Teressa and her calf would have died without urgent assistance. Teressa was immobilized for treatment and then moved with her calf into bomas so she could rest and recover.

Two-month-old black rhino calf 'Joseph' in the boma with his mother 'Teressa' - August 2008

Teressa struggling to move to water in the boma - August 2008.

Unfortunately the combination of being shot , lacking food and water for two days and experiencing the additional stress of the immobilization resulted in Teressa producing less milk than normal and young Joseph became distressed and lost weight as his hunger increased. It took many hours of patient effort  for a handler to coax Joseph to take milk from a bottle inserted through the wall of the pen in which he had been confined with his mother, who was remarkably tolerant of this human intrusion.  The success that was achieved through this human-rhino interaction meant that Joseph could be left with his mother rather than being separated for hand-rearing.  Three weeks later, Teressa was able to walk normally again, her milk production had returned to normal and the pair were released back into the wild together.

Teressa and Joseph were released from the bomas in September 2008.Routine rhino monitoring patrols confirmed that Teressa and Joseph continued to do well after release.

In November, Teressa gave birth to a new calf.

By December 2010, Joseph had grown into a strong sub-adult.

In November 2011, Joseph, now three and a half years old, was found back with his mother and his now-one-year old little sister.

Teressa and Joseph are just two of many rhinos which have escaped death and continued on to help their species fight against extinction. Black rhino cows Sinikwe and Juliet both suffered bullet injuries and lost their calves to poachers in separate attacks in early 2009. Fortunately their bullet wounds were not severe and both females recovered well and have since given birth to new calves. Mazda, another black rhino cow, was shot in the hind leg by poachers in late 2010. Mazda’s made a full recovery and gave birth to her next calf in March 2011.

Sinikwe and her 2011 calf.

Over 30 black rhino births have been recorded in the Lowevld conservancies in 2011. Over the same time period poachers have claimed a known 13 black rhinos in the same areas – a loss of 3.4% of the Lowveld black rhino population.

We would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who does what they can to help rhinos in their fight against extinction and may we all have a peaceful and productive 2012.

Calf in pool of water.

RHINO Text Giving Campaign

Now, you can text keyword RHINO to 20222 and

donate $5 for African Rhino Conservation.

Supporting wildlife has never been easier! The black rhino is truly a species on the edge. Zoos, conservation organizations, and field researchers have worked together for many years to help fight for its survival. Now the Houston Zoo launched a mobile giving campaign to support the International Rhino Foundation’s work to protect black rhinos in Zimbabwe from poachers and other threats.

All proceeds will come directly to IRF and our partner, the Lowveld Rhino Trust, and will be used for emergency operations to treat rhinos with snare injuries and gunshot wounds, to care for rhino calves orphaned by poaching, to translocate rhinos to areas where they are safer from poachers, and to help authorities apprehend and prosecute wildlife poachers.

A one-time donation of $5 will be added to your mobile phone bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. You can Text RHINO up to six times in support of this program. Messaging & Data Rates May Apply.  Donations are collected for the benefit of the Houston Zoo by the Mobile Giving Foundation and subject to the terms found at www.hmgf.org/tor txt HELP.STOP to cancel.

Text keyword RHINO to 20222 and protect a rhino today!

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How Long Can a Rhino’s Horn Grow?

Fast Facts About Rhinos and Their Horns

By Sectionov, Indonesia Liaison, IRF

The horn on a rhinoceros is very different from that of a sheep or antelope. A rhino’s horn is not attached to the skull. Rhino horn is made of compressed keratin fibers, the same material that is found in fingernails and hair! Some people believe that rhino horn has powerful medicinal uses, ranging from stopping nosebleeds and headaches to curing diphtheria and food poisoning, but there is no scientific evidence that this is true. The use of rhino horn for medical purposes has been illegal since 1993. Trade continues, however, and is driving the illegal poaching of endangered rhinos. Asian rhino horns are more highly prized than African horns; consumers believe that their smaller size means that they are more concentrated, and therefore more potent. One repeated misconception is that rhinoceros horn in powdered form is used as an aphrodisiac in traditional Chinese medicine. It is, in fact, generally prescribed for fevers and convulsions. The horns are also valued as dagger handles in Middle Eastern countries like Yemen, where they are known as “jambiyas.”

To prevent poaching in certain areas, rhinos have been tranquilized and their horns removed. Many rhino range states have stockpiles of rhino horn, which needs to be carefully managed.  

The African and the Asian rhinoceroses have some distinct characteristics. Morphologically, one obvious difference is that both African varieties have two horns in tandem, while the Sumatran rhino has two horns, but one typically is a stub, and the other two Asian types, Greater one-horned and Javan rhinos, have a single horn. Behaviorally, it has been found that African rhinos are more aggressive than Asian rhinos. African rhinos fight with their horns, using them to impale and throw their adversaries, while the Asian rhino fights with its bottom teeth, using them in a slashing motion. Their feeding habits vary as well. African rhinos feed low to the ground, whereas the Asian rhino browses on leaves that are higher.

The White Rhino has an immense body and large head, with a short neck and broad chest. This rhino can exceed 3,500 kg (7,700 lb), has a head-and-body length of 3.5–4.6 m (11–15 ft) and a shoulder height of 1.8–2 m (5.9–6.6 ft) The largest White Rhinoceros on record was about 4,600 kg (10,000 lb). On its snout it has two horns. The front horn is larger than the other horn and averages 90 cm (35 in) in length and can reach 150 cm (59 in). The White Rhinoceros also has a prominent muscular hump that supports its relatively large head. The colour of this animal can range from yellowish brown to slate grey.

An adult Black Rhinoceros stands 150–175 cm (59–69 in) high at the shoulder and is 3.5–3.9 m (11–13 ft) in length. An adult weighs from 850 to 1,600 kg (1,900 to 3,500 lb), with particularly large rhinos weighing up to 1,800 kg (4,000 lb), and the females are smaller than the males. Two horns on the skull are made of keratin with the larger front horn typically 50 cm long (20 inches), but sometimes up to 140 cm (55 inches). Sometimes, a third smaller horn may develop. The Black Rhino is much smaller than the white rhino, and has a pointed mouth, which it uses to grasp leaves and twigs when feeding.

The Greater One-Horned (or Indian) Rhinoceros has thick, silver-brown skin which creates huge folds all over its body. Its upper legs and shoulders are covered in wart-like bumps, and it has very little body hair. Fully-grown males are larger than females in the wild, weighing from 2,500–3,200 kg (5,500–7,100 lb). The Indian rhino stands at 1.75-2.0 meters (5.75-6.5 ft). Female Indian rhinos weigh about 1,900 kg (4,200 lb). The Indian Rhino is from 3–4 metres (10 – 14 feet) long. The record-sized specimen of this rhino was approximately 3,800 kg (8,377 lb). The Indian Rhino has a single horn that reaches a length of between 20 and 100 cm (8 – 39 inches). Its size is comparable to that of the White Rhino in Africa.

The Javan rhino‘s body length reaches up to 3.2 m (10 ft), including its head, and is 1.5–1.7 m (4 ft 10 in–5 ft 7 in) tall. Adults are variously reported to weigh between 900–2,000 kg (2,000 – 4,400 lbs). Male horns can reach 26 cm (10 inches) in length while in females they are knobs or are not present at all.

Typically a mature Sumatran rhino stands about 130 cm (51 in) high at the shoulder, with a body length of 240–315 cm (94–124 in), and weighs around 700 kg (1,500 lb), though the largest individuals have been known to weigh as much as 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb). Like the African species, it has two horns; the largest is the front (25–79 cm or 10 – 31 inches) and the smaller is second, and is usually less than 10 cm (4 inches) long. The males have much larger horns than the females. Hair can range from dense (the most dense hair is in young calves) to scarce. The color of these rhinos is reddish brown. The body is short and has stubby legs. They also have a prehensile lip. 

World Record Rhino Horns

According to a study by Dr. Nico van Strien in 2006, the longest rhino horn ever recorded was a 150 cm (59 inch) white rhino horn. This means the rhino’s horn alone was longer that the average adult pig! This horn was found before 1900 in South Africa and it was owned by Sir William Gordons Cummings, but according to the most recent information, the horn was stolen and its whereabouts are unknown.

The longest black rhino horn on record was 130 cm (51 inches) long; it was found in Kenya in 1928. The world record rhino horn for the Greater one-horned rhino is 57 cm (23 inches), and was found in Assam in 1909, and the world record Sumatran rhino horn is 60 cm (23 inches). Both of these horns are currently housed at the British Museum, which also has several Javan rhino horns.

World Record Rhino Horns by Dr. Nico Van Strien

Namibia Black Rhino Study

Dr. Robin Radcliffe of the International Rhino Foundation’s Rhino Conservation Medicine Program led a team of scientists from Cornell University, the Palm Beach Zoo and the Medical College of Georgia to Namibia for the first-part of a two-year Morris Animal Foundation-funded Project to study the respiratory and thermoregulatory patterns of black rhinoceros during field capture.  This work was made possible through a collaborative effort with the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism’s Rhino Capture Unit under the direction of Pierre Du Preez and Mark Jago with support from rhinoceros expert, Pete Morkel.

Etosha National Park spans the northcentral and northwestern portion of Namibia and encompasses a diverse landscape of mixed acacia thorn scrub, open plains and mopane woodland, all of which surrounds the vast Etosha pan.  This oasis in an otherwise arid land abounds with wildlife including lions and leopard, giraffe and zebra, oryz and gazelle, and both black and white rhinoceros. Here in the jewel of Namibia lies one of Africa’s largest populations of the endangered desert black rhinoceros – Diceros bicornis bicornis.  It was here that we came to study and learn about the rhinoceros.  Capture and anesthesia of rhinoceros across Africa has been practiced for half a century and the principles of field anesthesia have been well established.  Yet for all of this pioneering work there remains a dearth of scientifically based information on the most fundamental aspects of the anesthesia process in these prehistoric beasts.  Our team was a rare mix of zoological and field veterinarians (Robin Radcliffe and Michelle Miller), University veterinary medical professor (Robin Gleed) and University human medical professor (Art Taft).  Our group, funded by the Morris Animal Foundation, the International Rhino Foundation, Cornell University and the Palm Beach Zoo in partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, was in Namibia to begin a multiyear investigation looking into some of the most challenging aspects of rhinoceros anesthesia:  How much air does a rhinoceros breath?  What volume of air is moved in and out and what portion of that volume is contributing to gas exchange?  How does ventilation and perfusion change with posture?  These are a few of the many questions the team set out to answer.

Dr. Pete Morkel (right) shares a laugh with Dr. Mark Jago (left) as helicopter pilot Jhanny looks on from the controls of the Bell Jet Ranger.

In just over two weeks the Ministry of Environment and Tourism Game Capture Unit immobilized twenty-eight black rhinoceros for routine ear-notching and radiotelemetry work; data collection was conducted opportunistically on twenty-six animals.  Blood samples were collected at regular intervals to measure blood gas and chemistry values in free-ranging animals under anesthesia.  At the same time, in a subset of animals, the team collected the first in depth data on core ventilation parameters including tidal volume, minute ventilation, and dead space.  These measurements will help the scientists make informed decisions about the effects of potent opioid anesthetic drugs and how posture may alter the respiratory and cardiovascular systems; such data may help devise better ways to manage rhinoceros during capture and anesthesia in both the field and zoological setting.

Dr. Robin Gleed prepares to measure the expired gas of a black rhinoceros as rhino expert Pete Morkel monitors anesthesia.

Dr. Robin Gleed readies the “Hamster Run” for gas collection in a black rhinoceros.

Of course, the scientists met with a number of obstacles along the way.  The first was the numerous challenges of conducting work under difficult conditions.  The team rented a Land Rover TD5 from a tour vehicle company based in South Africa (Kwenda Safari of BushLore – make a note not to rent a 4×4 from this company!).  Upon arriving in Windhoek, the team was disheartened to discover that their expensive Land Rover was not at all what was promised.  The vehicle had seen heavy use and was in disrepair.  The entire morning of the first day and half of the next were devoted to replacing broken parts – a dead battery that repeatedly failed to start, leaking oil from the engine case, and no air conditioning were a few of the shortcomings noted.  With the vehicle finally starting on two salvaged batteries from another, the team could not wait for further repairs so they began the trek 500 kilometers to the north of Windhoek to Etosha National Park.  In the coming weeks we would discover a host of other problems with the Land Rover including two spare tires with only three nuts between them (like many of the other key parts on the vehicle the spare wheels had been salvaged from another vehicle and the rims would not accept the nuts on the other wheels), a host of blown fuses that shut down key systems including the head lights, windshield wipers, refrigeration and the like.  On one wild chase through the muddy Etosha pan following the capture team at high speeds we could not see through the windshield at all until Art Taft changed a few random fuses on the fly.  On another occasion when the fuses did solve the problem and splattered mud covered the windshield, Dr. Morkel stuck his head out of the Land Rover while we crashed through fender high brush on the way to a stumbling rhino.  We made it there in record time too!

Dr. Robin Radcliffe and Art Taft measure the mean expired carbon dioxide of a rhinoceros breath.

Despite all of the challenges of keeping pace with a game capture unit in the wilds of the African bush, the investigation went remarkably well.  The gas collection apparatus designed and built by Dr. Robin Gleed of Cornell University worked extremely well and proved suitable for field collection of minute ventilation in recumbent rhinoceros in the field.  The apparatus, consisting of large four-inch PVC pipes in the shape of giant candy-cane was soon dubbed the “hamster run” because Pierre Du Preez pictured his son fancying such a system of pipes for his pet hamsters.  The gas collection apparatus was simple in that it had no moving parts and no electronics, but its function was no less impressive.  The simple design of pipes separated by a series of one-way valves allowed the investigators to completely separate the inspired air from expired air.  In this way, the team was able to collect the entire volume of air that a rhino breaths out over a minute (minute ventilation).  Together with a variety of other data collected simultaneously, this information will help us determine the precise breathing patterns of recumbent anesthetized rhinoceros.

Dr. Michele Miller running a blood gas on the iSTAT.

The adventures of a rhinoceros veterinarian and his work around the world will continue in future episodes both in Namibia where the team will return in 2011 and also in Sumatra where the International Rhino Foundation and its partners celebrate a pregnancy in one of the rarest rhinos of the world!

By Dr. Robin W. Radcliffe

Rhino Photo of the Week

This week’s photo is by Anne Makaske.

Photo by Ann Makaske

Photo taken on 27 september 2007 in South Africa at Chitwa Chitwa Game Park.

Photo settings: Nikon D200, ISO250
1/500, f/4.0, 70-200 mm

This picture was taken in the early morning hours in Chitwa Chitwa. It’s a private game park bordering to the famous Krugerpark. Like us, the guide was delighted to spot a rhino with calf. The day before, following a sky black with vultures, we had discovered the decaying corps of a rhino in a dried riverbed. Five young ‘crazy’ male lions were feeding on it and the guide told us how weird it was for lions to kill a rhino. He suspected the animal to have been ill or wounded. We actually checked for the horn to be intact. It was.

“Alive is better then death” was his short conclusion when we saw this happy family. Me and my nose couldn’t agree more.

Anne Makaske

www.annemakaske.com
www.flickr.photos/annemakaske.com

Rhino Photo of the Week

Rhino and Flamingo

Originally uploaded by There can be only one Rob!

This week’s photo is by Flickr user Rob Wakefield of Stirling, Scotland.

Location: Lake Nakuru, Kenya.

Camera Settings: Auto – I used a compact. It was closest to hand at the time.

The story is that we were on safari in Kenya for our Honeymoon having just been married six days previously (hence I wasn’t wanting to spend too much time faffing around with cameras and the compact was close to hand). We had been given our own private safari van because we were honeymooners, and our driver had taken us to Lake Nakuru on our way to the Masai Mara. I’m still not sure if it was a detour but it was the only place with Rhino that we went to. It was amazing and well worth it if it was a detour.

www.flickr.com/photos/robwakefield/

Rhino Ride

Hassan Sachedina

On Sunday, November 1, Hassan Sachedina dipped the back tire of his bicycle in the chilly waters of the Pacific at Encinitas, California to begin a quest to save one of the world’s most endangered species.

 It was the start of RhinoRide, Hassan’s quest to cycle across half of America to raise awareness for African rhino conservation.

A Kenyan-born PhD trained environmental manager with extensive conservation field experience in Tanzania and Kenya, Hassan’s self-funded ride raised more than $4,600 for rhino conservation (http://www.firstgiving.com/rhinoride), exceeding his original goal of $4,200 – one dollar for every black rhino left in Africa.  

Unseasonably cold weather – at least for Texas, and for someone riding a bicycle across the Lone Star State –  forced Hassan to end the ride in Del Rio, short of his planned stop in San Antonio. 

Over more than 4 weeks and 1,200 miles, Hassan averaged 52 miles a day over some of the most demanding terrain imaginable.  Over the Davis Mountains of West Texas Hassan found “..places (where) the hills were so steep that my front wheel was moving so slowly that my speedometer read zero for periods of time.”

In the small West Texas town of Kent, Hassan bedded down for the night in what he described in his RhinoRide blog as a ‘burger van”, a small trailer known to the regular customers in Kent as ‘Burgers-n-More.’  The hamburger grill kept the ‘burger van’ toasty warm as the outside temperature dipped below freezing over night.

It was an incredible adventure and one you can share when you visit Hassan’s RhinoRide blog at http://www.rhinoride.org/.  And you can find out about RhinoRide, Part Two when you follow Hassan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HSachedina.

Rhino Photo of the Week

grazing

Originally uploaded by adamo2o2

This week’s photo is by Flickr user adamo2o2.

ate of photo: 24 October 2006

Location of photo: Longleat safari park

Camera settings: Olympus E-500 (1/500) f/5.6150 mm ISO100

This rhino was grazing at longleat as we were driving around the safari park.

www.flickr.com/photos/adamo2o2/

Rhino Photo of the Week

Rhino Feed

Originally uploaded by runfreefall

This week’s photo is from Alfred Payne, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The photo was taken on September 23, 2009 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

Camera settings: auto

Visited a nature farm in Northern Zimbabwe, close to Vic falls where a couple of black rhinos were being prepared for transport out of the country because of the situation there, others were planned to be released on the farm at a later stage.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/runfreefall/

A Fading Dream

By Oliver Ryder

May 30, 2007

In 1988 I traveled with my family behind the “Iron Curtain” to visit a zoo in Eastern Bohemia of some renown.  The Vychdoceska Zoo in Dvur Kralove, Czechoslovak Soviet Socialist Republic, had collected a variety of rare species of mammals directly from the wild in Africa and brought them to an otherwise little recognized zoo.  How this small zoo was able to arrange such a feat is a story that involves the cold war and the struggle for the two major powers of the time, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., to enlist African allies, lest the other side gained controlling interests of the African continent and its rich natural resources. 

Of the two species of African rhino, the white rhino is distributed in two long-isolated populations.  The southern white rhinoceros declined to the brink of extinction and then through conservation efforts in South African parks as well as the development of technologies for translocating rhinos – including to places like the newly begun San Diego Wild Animal Park – the species has recovered remarkably.  The northern white rhino, once the more numerous and the subject of a famous African hunting safari by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was drastically declining.  South African conservationist Ian Player visited CRES and requested that we clarify the evolutionary and taxonomic status of the northern white rhinoceros.  A pair had been held in the collections of the Zoological Soicety of San Diego and samples from one animal were available.  This request came just at the time that new technologies in DNA analysis were being applied to exactly these kinds of questions and immediately we shifted our priorities to investigate this question brought before us.  A CRES Postdoctoral Fellow, trained at UC Berkley, who later became the Chair of the Biochemistry Department at Howard University, undertook these studies and, because of our Frozen Zoo^® repositories, was able to immediately utilize material on hand and demonstrate the clear genetic differentiation of the northern and southern white rhinoceros.  These studies were later confirmed in other laboratories and with larger numbers of both northern and southern white rhinos in the study; the results were upheld, helping to focus conservation effort on the northern white rhinos and the unique ecosystem in which they survived.  Garamba National Park lies in the northeastern portion of Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) adjacent to the border with Sudan.  Heroic efforts by field researchers to study and monitor the rhinos in Garamba led to the chilling conclusion that fewer than 30 probably remained.  The breeding group in Czechoslovakia represented the only breeding population outside of Africa.

Over the course of summer sojourn art Dvur Kralove with my family, I helped establish DNA collections from animals imported from Africa into the zoo.  Laboratory space in their scientific institute was made available to me and I worked on a daily basis with the curators and veterinarians.  My children had the run of the zoo and often received rides on the veterinarian’s moped.  We got to know each of the northern white rhinos as individuals and to our great joy, a female rhino calf was born that summer while we were present.  Later, two females and a male northern white rhinoceros were transferred from Dvur Kralove to the San Diego Wild Animal Park in hopes that the open spaces and environment that had been so conducive for breeding southern white rhinos would produce similar benefits for the highly endangered northern white rhinoceros.  The transfer took place in 1989 and, in spite of all efforts that could be mustered from curators, keepers, veterinarians, and reproductive specialists, our female northern white rhinos never reproduced.  This morning’s news contains the obituary of Nadi, one of the rhinos I first met in Czechoslovakia, whom my children and I visited on many occasions and who undertook an immense journey in her lifetime from the tall grass savannas of the eastern Congo to end her days at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.  We have saved her cells and her DNA, something less than our dreams of her producing calves in the San Pasqual Valley. 

 As the light of this unique animal flickers ever more dimly, the dreams of rapidly recovering this species seems thwarted by events frustratingly beyond our ability to influence.  It’s good that we tried, in the face of overwhelming odds, to save this, yet another, endangered species.  And, the story is not yet completely written.  But when the obituary of a single animal has such a pronounced impact, we find occasion to pause and reflect.  And then, we roll up our sleeves and see what we can do.