White Rhino owes its survival largely to improved capture methods

Rhino Capture and Relocation

The recovery of the white rhino from near extinction 100 years ago is one of the great success stories of African wildlife conservation.

This earned worldwide recognition for the Natal Parks Board (now known as the KZN Nature Conservation Service), the South African body responsible for developing rhino capture and relocation techniques.

Following the success of its early initiatives, an ambitious project dubbed "Operation Rhino" was launched by the Board in 1961.

This involved the transport of surplus numbers of white rhinos from their "home-base", the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal, to other protected areas.

By the end of 1999, a total of 2,367 white rhinos had been redistributed worldwide, of which 1,262 had been rehabilitated in Southern African protected areas.

Early Methods of Capturing Rhino
Early rhino capture techniques pioneered by Dr Ian Player and Dr Tony Hawthorn involved darting large doses of immobilizing drugs into the animals.

These animals were then followed with vehicles and horses before roping and manhandling them to the ground.

This was cumbersome - and highly dangerous - as a rhino could take up to 20 minutes to go down from drugs, travelling several kilometres in the process.

Then, in 1963, there was an important breakthrough with the advent of a new drug - M99 - a powerful morphine derivative.

This drug took effect rapidly and could be administered in small doses, so eliminating the problem of dart wounds caused by the large volumes of drugs previously required.

Once sedated with M99, a rhino will sink to the ground, allowing the capture team to rope the animal and take blood and other samples. Tiny microchips are drilled into both horns for identification should they ever enter the black market and be offered for sale

Antidote Administered
An antidote to M99 is then administered. Once the dazed animal gets back to its feet, it can be led to a waiting capture crate. Bear in mind though that a dangerous, three-ton animal has now been revived - it takes great skill, expertise and courage to successfully load the rhino.

Darting From the Air Introduced
There was a further breakthrough in the early 70s when helicopters were introduced. Now rhino could be located from the air and darted from the chopper with minimal stress.

Not only is the rhino darted from the air, but the helicopter can guide the animal to accessible terrain, while also directing the ground crew to the correct area, where the animal can be loaded into the capture crate.

Airlifting by Helicopter
In 1992 another step was taken to facilitate capture operations when helicopters were used to airlift rhino from the Umfolozi Wilderness area for the first time.

Management policy prohibits the use of vehicles in this wilderness zone, which meant conventional capture methods were not possible.

After a rhino is darted in the usual way from a small helicopter, a powerful helicopter capable of lifting in excess of 3 tons is directed to the spot where the animal is lying.

A net is dropped and the ground crew then position the rhino on this, before the helicopter returns to hoist it up with ropes and slings, airlifting it directly to the recovery vehicles.

With modern technology, rhino mortalities during moving operations and while in the holding pens or "bomas" have declined to less than one per cent.

For more information on game capture, see the Wildlife Game Capture section on the KZN Wildlife website. Above information and pictures provided courtesy of KZN Wildlife.