On Monday, 30 white rhinos had been transferred from South Africa to Rwanda in a Boeing 747, negotiators mentioned.
The animals traveled 3,400 kilometers from Finda Private Game Reserve in South Africa to Akagera National Park in japanese Rwanda. African Parks, the charity concerned within the operation, mentioned they launched into the 40-hour journey after months of preparation.
“We had to calm them down to reduce their stress, which in itself is risky, and monitor them,” mentioned Peter Fairenhead, CEO of African Parks.
Why had been the rhinos transferred?
It was a part of a program to replenish white rhino populations destroyed by poaching for the reason that Nineteen Seventies.
Also reintroduced to Akagera National Park had been the lion and the black rhinoceros, species that turned extinct within the space within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s attributable to poaching and habitat destruction.
The park additionally homes African elephants, African buffaloes, Masai giraffes and greater than 490 species of birds.
Why is the white rhino in danger?
The southern white rhinoceros, one in every of two subspecies of the white rhinoceros, is taken into account “virtually endangered” by the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN).
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are at present 20,000 southern white rhinos on the planet. The white rhino inhabitants decreased by 12% between 2012 and 2017.
The different subspecies, the northern white rhinoceros, is on the verge of extinction, with solely two females remaining. Scientists try to avoid wasting the species by harvesting eggs from one in every of two residing females and sperm from two useless males to create embryos in an unprecedented breeding program.
The foremost menace to those animals is poaching. In South Africa, 1000 rhinos had been killed between 2013 and 2017 attributable to excessive demand for his or her horns in some Asian international locations, primarily China and Vietnam.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
