The process to ‘import’ back Tanzanian Rhinoceroses that were ‘exported’ to South Africa decades ago have once again resumed, but may take till December to be thoroughly accomplished. The Director of Wildlife, Mr Erasmus Tarimo, has said negotiations with the South African government were in the final stages, but the dealings had to be temporarily stalled following the recently held general elections in that country.
“There are still other factors that need to be taken into consideration, including costs of bringing the animals to Tanzania. I think the rhinos won’t be coming until at the end of this year,” said Mr Tarimo when speaking to the 'Sunday News'. It was previously expected that the first batch of five rhinoceroses that were ‘deported’ to South Africa in the eighties would be brought back into the country in June, this year.
Tanzania has been negotiating to bring back its rhinos reportedly taken to South Africa, in the eighties, in order to save the endangered ferocious mammals from poacher who targeted the species' horns. Mr Benard Murunya, the acting conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority said that, while it had proved to be too expensive to bring back all the five rhinos at the same time, the country was prepared to fly back the animals on installments as freight costs permitted. The first Rhino therefore was expected to be flown back next month, according to Mr Murunya.
Experts estimate that it can cost at least US $100,000 to transport one rhino from South Africa to (possibly) Kilimanjaro International Airport. “There is another country which promised to assist Tanzania by meeting the cost of bringing back our rhinos from South Africa. At the moment, we can not disclose the name of the country yet,” Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Ezekiel Maige, said when he visited the Northern Zone Tourism Circuit recently.
Neither the conservator nor the Minister was in position to tell in which park the rhinos would be relocated once brought back, but reliable reports indicate that the animals had previously been taken from the Ngorongoro eco-system. Last year, the United States government has expressed interest to help Tanzania bring back the pack of rhinoceroses that had been taken to a South African animal sanctuary some years ago. This was said by the then Secretary of the American Department of Interior, Mr Dirk Kempthorne, who had represented the immediate former US President George Bush, at the Leon Sullivan Summit event in Arusha in June 2008.
Mr Kempthorne said this at the Ngorongoro area when he and other Summit delegates toured the conservation area, as part of the Sullivan Summit programme. He was responding to a question from the Director of Wildlife, Erasmus Tarimo, regarding the rare species of rhinoceroses that were reportedly been taken to South Africa for ‘safe-keeping’ and which Tanzania was now struggling to bring them back. Tanzania has been negotiating with the South African Government on how the animals could be brought back, in order to increase the number of rhinos in the national parks and game reserves.
Mr Tarimo admitted that the only problem so far was how to fly back animals, as each animal needed its own cargo plane. Currently, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area has a total of 24 rhinos, residing in the crater equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices to monitor and protect them from possible poachers who could be hunting them for their horns. In Asia, rhino horns are believed to have medicinal values, but elsewhere the horns are used to make varieties of expensive artifacts.
The rhinoceros consist of five species of odd-toed ungulates in the Rhinocerotidae family. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia. Three of the five species (Javan, Sumatran and Black Rhinoceros) are said to be critically endangered. The Indian Rhino is also on the verge of extinction, with less than 2,700 individuals left on earth, while the White Rhino is registered as Vulnerable, with roughly 14,500 remaining in the wild. The number of Black Rhinos had reportedly declined by 96 per cent worldwide between 1970 and 1992.
In 1980s, dedicated conservationists and wildlife policy advocates throughout Africa realised that a long-term strategy had to be developed, in order to save the African Black Rhino from complete extinction. By then there were less than 100 rhinos in Tanzania, in very widely dispersed small population groups. There were even fewer in Kenya, as well as most of Central Africa. There used to be 20,000 black rhinos as recently as in the 1960s in Tanzania alone, but poaching for the valued rhino horn and overgrazing of habitat shrunk the area and increased human population adversely affected the wildlife population.
To address the shrinking rhino populations, Tanzania, with the help of other African Parks, governments and conservationists, hatched a protected breeding programme that would boost the black rhino numbers. The project resulted into Mkomazi Game Reserve Rhino Sanctuary, occupying 43 square miles of the total 2,200 square miles of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, in Kilimanjaro region. The sanctuary has guards patrolling the electrified, alarmed fence around it.
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