Chain
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Chain has more than settled well into his new home in Gonarezhou National Park. He seems to be trying to take over with a home range more than double the size of any other adult male there. He regularly patrols his boundaries challenging other bulls that he comes across.
Chain in his Gonarezhou National Park boma
Translocating Chain, the Giant Rhinoceros
“He is not going to fit!” We look at each other in disbelief. In over 200 black rhino translocations undertaken by the Lowveld Rhino Trust this is the first time the rhino will not fit in the crate. “We have to let him out. Everyone clear out.”
Chain’s huge body is too long for a normal sized black rhino transport crate
We certainly had no such trouble the first time Chain was translocated.
It was October 2005 and the Lowveld Rhino Trust was translocating all the survivors they could find from Gourlays Ranch. Under Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform program the property had been converted from wildlife reserve to subsistence farming, leaving the resident black rhino population exposed to severe poaching risk. Chain was barely a month old. So small he could not safely be transported in a standard black rhino crate because it would be far to big for him. Instead, a lion cage was hastily modified into two compartments so Chain could fit safely in one end, and four-month-old Shamiso into the other. The mothers, Ring and Mabuya, plus two other young females, Sisi and Sitholiwe, were all crated normally and loaded onto the transport truck for the long drive to Bubye Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe’s South-East Lowveld.
The lion crate mid conversion into a baby rhino crate to safely transport Chain to Bubye Valley Conservancy
Safely in their crates, the rhinos are loaded onto the truck
Bubye Valley Conservancy has provided sanctuary to well over a hundred black rhinos that were left vulnerable to poaching as their habitats were converted for human use post 2000. The Lowveld Rhino Trust translocated thirty black rhinos in from Gourlays, eighty-nine in from Bubiana Conservancy and fourteen from Chiredzi River. Along with other orphans and escapees BVC has gone from having no black rhinos at all in 2002 to being one of the five biggest black rhino populations in the world today. This achievement is testament to the strategy of consolidating failing and unviable populations into areas large enough to support over 100 rhinos and focusing conservation effort there. This partnership between LRT and BVC has been so successful that they are now in a position to be able to contribute rhinos to new areas with the same potential. Gonarezhou National Park is such an area.
Chain as a month-old calf and his mother having arrived safely at BVC
Reintroducing black rhinos to Gonarezhou
Gonarezhou Conservation Trust has invested heavily in readying Gonarezhou National Park for the reintroduction of black rhinos. Infrastructure, training, viability studies, management plans.
Years and years of work have been required to get this, Zimbabwe’s second largest national park, to a point where it is ready to take on the additional challenge of a black rhino population. In combined operations between Malilangwe Trust, Lowveld Rhino Trust, Bubye Valley Conservancy, and Gonarezhou Conservation Trust, Gonarezhou is now home to a new population of black rhinos.
Chain was eventually successfully translocated. Again in a modified crate made for another species. This time his massive 280cm spine length, plus head, fitted easily into the white rhino crate. He weighed in at an estimated 1,500kg. He was moved with his neighbouring females, Siashialaba and Siyadindi. It is anticipated that they will find each other post release and establish overlapping home ranges as has so frequently been observed with other translocated black rhinos monitored by the Lowveld Rhino Trust.
