RE; IT IS RHINO UNDER 24 -HOUR ARMED GUARD?

With rhinos under increasing threat from poachers, conservancies in east Africa are on a mission to save the specie. 

In Tanzania there are 113 black rhinos, most of them in the Serengeti. In 1951 the government had established the little-known Mkomazi Game Reserve in northern Tanzania but it suffered from years of neglect until the conservationist Tony Fitzjohn was invited to work with the government on the rehabilitation of the reserve in 1989. 
It was made a national park in 2008. Its 1,250 square miles of thick vegetation provide the perfect habitat for animals, but it is not so good for tourists coming to view them. So there are no luxury lodges, only a small tented camp popular with bird watchers.

The cattle herders – formerly the park’s biggest enemy because of the damage grazing causes and the threat to wildlife – have been cleared out since hefty fines were imposed by TANAPA, which runs the Tanzanian national parks. In the 1960s there were about 200 black rhinos at Mkomazi; by the time Fitzjohn arrived none was left; nor were there any elephants. Now there are more than 1,000 elephants, and Fitzjohn has created a sanctuary for black rhinos, an area of 21 square miles with 8ft-high electric fences patrolled by a armed guards. 

I visited Mkomazi in April; Fitzjohn was there with his wife, Lucy, and their four children. There were 15 black rhinos in the sanctuary – the first few were bought from South Africa. When I arrived a plan was being discussed to import three black rhinos bred in Kent. They are a gift from Damian Aspinall, who has 16 black rhinos at the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. (Reintroducing animals to their native countries is something in which Aspinall specialises.) The three new rhinos will diversify the genetic pool at Mkomazi, and there is a lot of discussion about permits and logistics: DHL is providing a plane, and an expert vet has been lined up, along with a rhino whisperer, Berry White, a former keeper.

The irony of exporting rhinos from Kent to Africa is not lost on anyone. But it is not new: in 2009 three rhinos were brought over from Dvur Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, and they made the transition from zoo to wild with surprising ease. Despite their former diet having consisted mainly of baked goods, they took to the African vegetation with vigour. 'Their keeper arrived with all these pastries and vegetables,’ Fitzjohn says. 'It was like the bloody Gordon Ramsay show. Our guys chopped off some grewia and euphorbia, chucked it in their boma [enclosure], and they just went for it and left the bread.’

It took a while for the Mkomazi rhinos to start breeding, but there have now been nine births (and a few deaths, though none from poaching). In 10 years’ time Fitzjohn would like to have 25-30 rhinos that he could move into an area accessible to tourists.

Black rhinos – all rhinos – need any help they can get, although the story has not been only bad: the population of the southern white rhino was down to 30 at the beginning of the 20th century. It is now more than 20,000 (black rhinos number 4,880). Conservation measures were put into practice, and the population climbed steadily until two decades of heavy poaching in the 1970s and 1980s. But concerted efforts to preserve them, combined with a decline in the Yemenese economy (where rhino horn is also in demand to make ornamental dagger handles), pushed the numbers up again, and in 2007 only 13 were poached in all of Africa. Then the price of rhino horn started to climb once more. The sheer numbers of Chinese workers in Africa today, combined with endemic local corruption, has facilitated the export of rhino horn and ivory, and the market has diversified: there is a surge of demand in Vietnam, where rhino horn is illegally but aggressively marketed as a cure for everything from hangovers to cancer.

As well as live rhinos being killed in Africa and Asia, there have even been cases of rhino horns and stuffed heads being wrenched unceremoniously off the walls of museums and auction houses across Europe. Many museums have removed their horns from view or replaced them with fakes.

'Have you ever seen one?’ Fitzjohn asks, and disappears, returning a few minutes later bearing a rhino horn. (A horn can grow again, but it will never regain its sharp point.) It is dark grey – solid, smooth and gently curved. Suspiciously, a small bit has been pared off the base.

Did you try some? I ask. 'Yeah.’ And? 'Didn’t do anything.’

Fitzjohn removed this horn from one of his rhinos, James, as it was becoming increasingly aggressive and he worried it would harm the others. After it had been de-horned it underwent a character change, he says, and became calmer. He slaps the horn on to the table.

'Someone’s got to change the thinking of the Chinese and Vietnamese; they have to appreciate that they are impoverishing other countries by believing this stuff.’ He points out that the Chinese are hugely proud of their iconic species, the giant panda. Killing a giant panda can result in 20 years in prison (until 1997 it was punishable by death).

'I had this great idea,’ he growls. 'I want to put up billboards all over the world – with one of those awful pictures of a dead rhino with its horn cut off, blood everywhere, and underneath it would say, 'Stop buying Chinese or the panda gets it'.

Rhino conservation is an expensive business. Fitzjohn’s solar-powered fence costs $40,000 per mile to install, and it has to be maintained. He has 22 men in his security team, the core of which is ex-Tanzanian army. His operation – which includes educational outreach programmes and the breeding and releasing of African wild dogs – is funded by donors (principally Suzuki Rhino in Holland and, in Britain, the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust and Tusk). This is the future for rhinos: electric fences and armed guards. Is there a limit on how much should be spent to protect a species?

'Do whatever you can, whatever it takes, whatever it costs,’ Fitzjohn says. 'Otherwise we lose another species, and it happens to be a fairly big one, and a fairly old one. And it’s as important as the seas and the chameleons and the grasslands and everything else – you have your flagship species for a reason. Take the elephants and the rhinos out of the eco system and you’ll be left with a few billion gazelles running round – and suddenly this huge great wonder of the world will be destroyed in front of us.

'And there’s no need for it. There’s plenty of room for animals, there’s plenty of room for people, too, it just needs a bit of management and central government control. It certainly doesn’t need democracy. It’s farming, y’know? It’s management. I grew up in the days when all my old mates were the original Kenyan game wardens – David Sheldrick, Bill Woodley, George Adamson. They saved animals, they saved whole areas. Ian Craig leads the way in management now, at Lewa. And he’s always keen to share his ideas. He’s got more rhinos than anybody else. Ian Craig,’ Fitzjohn says meaningfully, 'is the only person I defer to.’