Abercrombie & Kent Journey: Save the Rhino at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy
There are only two surviving northern white rhinos and both are female. This country is doing its utmost to potentially revive the species.
Up ahead, the two rarest females on Earth. Najin, 35, and her daughter Fatu, 24, are the last surviving northern white rhinos and their heads are down snacking on carrots as our Kenyan safari LandCruiser pulls alongside, having passed through heavy-duty security. But, with medical assistance – IVF, surrogacy and stem-cell therapies are in pioneering territory for rhinos – the dynamic duo may not be the last ever of their subspecies. There has been recent success. “We have hope,” says their head carer, Zacharia Mutai, who invites our small group to reach across from the vehicle and touch docile Fatu’s armour-plate skin. Now I’m not one who insists that touching is believing, but this dedicated keeper has worked with rhinos for 24 years and comes from a family of animal carers. So I accept his invitation and my fingertips make delicate contact with the wonderful animal, whose ancestors have been around for 50 million years.
It is an emotional moment. She has tufts of hair on the tips of her ears and tail and eyelashes, and the crisscross hide of a rhinoceros. How else to describe it? We are at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, right on the Equator but in the foothills of Mt Kenya and the Aberdares at a cooling altitude of 1826m, and about 200km north of Nairobi. An Abercrombie & Kent bespoke journey has brought us to these parts, with digs at Sanctuary Tambarare, the tour operator’s newest luxury tented camp. Our roaming neighbours are the mightiest wildlife on the planet.
What we first learn about white rhinos from Zacharia is that if you scrub at the caked mud and dirt on their grey-brown hide (as one might), they are not white. They have wider mouths (with a square-shaped upper lip) than the black rhino and, so it is said, the Afrikaans word “wyd” for “wide” became confused with “white”. Fatu and Najin have a 300ha enclosure to wander, which is under armed guard. Born in captivity, they belong to Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, which sent the two to Ol Pejeta in 2009, along with Najin’s father, Sudan (born in South Sudan but trapped, aged two, by agents for a circus), and another northern white male, Suni. As the subspecies became critically endangered, the conservancy says it hoped a return to a rhino homeland, and its climate and grasses, might be a better reproductive environment.
Sadly, Suni died in 2014. In 2018, at the age of 45, which is old for a rhino, Sudan had to be euthanised when he became unable to stand and was suffering. There are heartbreaking photos of Zacharia comforting the last male of its kind. For glass-half-full people, here’s where the optimism kicks in. With semen collected from the last of the males before they died and oocytes (developing eggs) from Fatu, some 30 embryos have been created in the lab. The hope is they can be implanted and survive the 16-month gestation period. There’s an added degree of difficulty as neither Fatu nor her mum has been assessed as capable of bearing offspring. That’s where surrogacy comes in and the belief that a near cousin, a southern white rhino (of which the northern white is a subspecies), will be the birth mother. Earlier this year, the world’s first rhino IVF pregnancy was reported (an all-southern white affair), but the mother died of a bacterial infection triggered by spores released in floodwater soil.
The German-led BioRescue team is also pursuing a second line of research in taking skin cells from the northern whites and reprogramming these into stem cells, from which sperm and egg cells can be developed. One day, says Zacharia, “the world will celebrate”.
The enemy of the rhino has been the poacher, as well as loss of habitat. The WWF estimates that in 2022 at least 560 rhinos were poached across Africa. The prize is the horn, of which the African species have two. Composed of keratin, the protein that strengthens human nails, skin and hair, the rhino horn (which can regrow) has a “magic” place in Asian medicine. But it has no proven medicinal value and while popularly believed to have an aphrodisiac quality, it is also valued as a “cure” for ailments from headaches to cancer. But jewellery and other carvings fashioned from the horn make for status-symbol possessions and gifts with cachet.
Ol Pejeta prides itself on being poacher-free for about seven years thanks to its team of 170 rangers, as well as fencing and thermal imagining cameras. Keeping ahead of the pack is the K9 anti-poaching dog unit, which can be visited as a conservancy experience. We meet some delightful black and tan tracker bloodhounds with names such as Diego and Sarah, and a litter of pups, just three months old and, while revelling in a romp, are already on the case. A demonstration of the hounds’ skills in hunting down scents over a long distance is remarkable; so too, the expertise of six-year-old spaniel Drum, dark brown and white, and with a refined snout to sniff out ammunition. His work is like finding a needle in a haystack, but after a life-long association with spaniels, I know that nose will hit its target with pinpoint accuracy. The dogs’ handlers are loving and proud but make no mistake as they keep watch over the 36,500ha conservancy, with its rich population of wildlife, their mission is dangerous. Slung over their shoulders are firearms.
The collective noun for rhinos is “crash”. These creatures with poor eyesight can nonetheless hit speeds of 40km/h. Not bad for a 2000kg character. How wonderful if the northern white rhino could crash through once more.
In the know
Ol Pejeta Conservancy is open daily 7am-7pm year-round and offers a range of wildlife experiences, including visiting the white rhinos and anti-poaching dog unit. Abercrombie & Kent conducts bespoke and small group tours throughout the world. A 10-day Classic Kenya trip includes a night at Hemingways Hotel, Nairobi; two nights at Tawi Lodge, Amboseli; and three nights at both Sanctuary Tambarare, Ol Pejeta and Sanctuary Olonana, Masai Mara. From $13,995 a person, covering meals, beverages and game viewing activities.
More to the story
The international Save the Rhino project estimates there are about 16,800 southern white and 6400 black rhinos in Africa; 4000 greater one-horned rhinos in India and Nepal; 76 Javan rhinos in a single population in Ujung Kulon National Park; and 34-47 Sumatran rhinos in the wild. The Australian Rhino Project aims to relocate a breeding herd of white rhinos from South Africa to expand the population here at accredited open-range zoos.
Graham Erbacher was a guest of Abercrombie & Kent.
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