A Vision For The TigerA Vision For The Tiger From The Director's Desk

Preface

A Wildlife Tragedy

The Insatiable Demand for Horn

WWF's Response to the Crisis

The Early Years: 1961-1970

The 1970s and

The 1980s: Capture and Consolidation

The 1990s: Cautious Optimism

What We Have Learned

Challenges for the Future

Box 1

Box 2

Table 1

Acknowledgements
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The Early Years: 1961-1970

RhinoDuring the first decade of its existence, WWF donated over CHF700,000 to African rhino projects, largely in support of anti-poaching and management activities in national parks and game reserves.

WWF's first grant for rhino conservation - Project No. 6 - was made in January 1962 to combat poaching of northern white rhino in four reserves in the West Nile and Madi districts of north-west Uganda. At the time, West Nile Province was thought to harbour around 80 rhinos, 60 of which lived in the Ajai Rhino Sanctuary. Just three years earlier, the West Nile white rhino population had numbered 150 animals. With hindsight it is clear that this population was doomed since this border region was, and still is, particularly unstable. Surveys funded by WWF in the 1980s confirmed that northern white rhinos had become extinct in Uganda.

Other protected areas assisted without success during this period included Kidepo (Uganda), Meru (Kenya), and Garamba national parks. Garamba is WWF's longest running rhino project in Africa (see Box 2). The fact that rhinos still exist in this difficult-to-control border area attests not only to the commitment and support that WWF and other organizations (Frankfurt Zoological Society, IUCN-The World Conservation Union, the International Rhino Foundation, UNESCO) have provided over the years, but especially to the dedication of the park's staff and the Institut congolais pour la conservation de la nature (ICCN).

In the early 1960s, WWF funded the translocation of southern white rhinos from Umfolozi in South Africa to the Kyle and Matopos reserves in what is now Zimbabwe. Funds were also made available via the South African Nature Foundation (now WWF-South Africa) for the translocation of both black and white rhinos between reserves in South Africa. Although relatively modest, these early efforts certainly contributed to the remarkable recovery of the southern white rhino.



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