AMERICAN SCENE, Page 12Rio Grande Valley, TexasOh, Give Me a Home Where Wild Rhinos Roam And the deer and theantelope play with ostriches and zebrasBy MaryAnne Vollers
At least twice a week, Calvin Bentsen sets out at daybreak to
visit his rhinos.
Armed with a bag of apples, he aims his Chevy Suburban through
the gates of his huge Spanish-style home in McAllen, Texas, and
heads north for his ranch in the rangeland. McAllen lies in the Rio
Grande valley, just above the Mexican border, but its architectural
boot print owes more to Los Angeles than Lonesome Dove. The city
is a sprawling network of commercial strips, trailer parks and
low-slung shingle-and-stucco developments ringed by citrus groves
and cotton fields. If you think this overworked stretch of real
estate is an unlikely habitat for Africa's black rhinoceros,
spending a morning with Calvin Bentsen will change your mind.
Four years ago, Bentsen turned 80 acres of his 2,200-acre
spread into an experimental breeding ground for a pair of
endangered black rhinos. Zoos are cramped. Bentsen's expansive
pastures offer the South African-born animals most of the comforts
of home. "This is fine rhino country," says Bentsen, as he pulls
off the highway onto a sandy dirt road. Suddenly you are in south
Texas as it was before the developers paved it over. In a soft
morning fog, a visitor might mistake the silvery mesquite thickets
and rough grass clearings for Africa's Zambezi valley.
So it seems almost natural when a 2,500-lb. bull rhinoceros
crashes out of the undergrowth in a full thundering charge. "Here,
Macho," Bentsen calls. "How 'bout an apple for breakfast?" The
massive beast puts on the brakes just short of a six-bar iron fence
that separates man and animal. With a deft twist of his heavy,
pointed lips, Macho plucks a slice of apple from Bentsen's hand.
Bentsen reaches through the bars to scratch the leathery muzzle.
Rhinos are slow-witted, almost childlike creatures that when
startled tend to charge first and ask questions later. But once it
knows your voice, a captive rhino can be called like a pet dog.
The beasts appreciate space and solitude and a simple routine:
they doze in the mornings, wallow in mudholes in the heat of the
afternoon, and feed in the evening. It turns out that south Texas
not only looks like Africa, it apparently tastes like it too. The
rhinos have been thriving on a local bush called huisache
(pronounced wee-satch this side of the border), a relative of the
African acacia. Macho and his mate Chula chomp down about 40 lbs.
of it a day. The two now live in separate pastures because on Feb.
28 Chula gave birth to their first offspring: a healthy female
calf.
Bentsen, 63, is a tall man made taller by a Stetson hat and
black ostrich-skin boots. His face is covered with a thin wash of
freckles, and his steady brown eyes size up his conversation
partners from behind thick, black-framed glasses. On most days
Bentsen, who is a first cousin of Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, can
be found in an air-conditioned office managing his real estate
investments. He used to raise steers on his ranch until he realized
that "cattle bore me to death."
What interests Calvin Bentsen is wild animals, the stranger
the better. About 15 years ago, he joined the growing number of
Texas ranchers who are devoting some of their pastures to exotic
wildlife. Now Indian axis deer, African eland, wildebeests, Grevy's
zebras and sable antelope roam Bentsen's range. To help support his
wildlife habit, Bentsen sells surplus animals. His ostrich chicks
fetch $7,500 a pair. Several times a year he lets hunters take
trophies from the surplus animals on the ranch. Bentsen is a
lifelong hunter and also a dedicated conservationist.
To non-hunters, shooting animals and saving them may seem like
opposing ideals. Serious hunters say that is a misunderstanding.
"True hunters have a love of the animal," says Bentsen. "And
they're also interested in coming back and doing it again next
year." When Bentsen was a younger man, he killed a black rhino bull
with a single bullet from his Holland & Holland. It was a neck
shot, and the huge animal dropped where it stood in the hot Kenya
dust.
That was back in 1960, and it seemed then that the world would
never run out of rhinos. "They were everywhere," Bentsen recalls
of his first African safari. "They would charge the vehicles. One
even walked through camp." These days, a rhino is a rare sight in
the African wilderness. In the past 20 years, the black rhino
population has plummeted from 65,000 to fewer than 4,000. Rhinos
are headed down the trail to extinction because poachers hunt them
for their horns. Most rhino horn is smuggled to the Middle East and
Asia, where it is carved into dagger handles or ground into folk
medicines. Conservationists hope that if African governments lose
the battle to protect their rhinos, a stockpile of rhinos in
America may someday be used to repopulate African game parks.
To that end, the Zimbabwe government is sending ten of its
threatened rhinos to south Texas ranches this summer. The program
is supervised by the American Association of Zoological Parks and
Aquariums, but the bill is being footed by Game Coin, a group of
hunters. Rescuing rhinos costs big money: Game Coin has already
invested $300,000 in the rhinos at Bentsen's ranch, and will spend
more than that to capture and transport the Zimbabwe rhinos.
Bentsen's ranch is closed to the public. But every week or so,
Calvin and his wife Marge throw a little picnic for a few of their
friends near the rhino pastures. On a balmy spring evening,
lightweight tables and chairs are set out under a mesquite tree,
just as they would be in an African hunting camp in the shadow of
Kilimanjaro. Marge, a silver-haired Texas beauty dressed for the
bush in denim and turquoise, lays on a simple feast of guacamole
and chicken-salad sandwiches. Calvin uncorks bottles of fine South
African grand cru.
The guests toast the newborn rhino. The calf, who according to
Bentsen arrived looking more like a wrinkly little moose than a
rhino, is now a 70-lb. miniature of its mother with a tiny stump
of a horn sprouting from its nose. The curious youngster, who is
just learning rhino etiquette, leaves its mother's side to approach
the visitors on the other side of the bars. It paws the ground,
huffing and snorting like a grownup pachyderm.
"Isn't she the sweetest little thing?" Calvin whispers. "I'd
like to make a pet of her." Suddenly the mother rhino wheels and
storms at the guests, who jump away from the fence. As Chula nudges
the baby back to the safety of the tall grass, the raspy warning
grunt of a wild rhinoceros saws through the quiet of the south
