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 1980s: Capture and Consolidation

With Project Rhino funds and more, the 1980s saw over 60 rhino-related projects implemented in Africa, while in-depth studies of the nature and extent of the international trade in rhino horn were carried out in the Middle East and Asia. Global funding for African rhinos by WWF rose to more than CHF13 million for projects initiated or completed during the decade.

A changing paradigm of rhino conservation was reflected in WWF's increasing commitment to private and government-run sanctuaries. The first successful rhino sanctuary in Kenya, a privately funded initiative on the Solio Ranch, served as a ground-breaking model for intensive rhino conservation. In 1982, WWF began assisting the Ol Ari Nyiro Sanctuary (Laikipia Ranch). This was followed in 1985 with funding for another privately-owned sanctuary, Ngare Sergoi (Lewa Downs Ranch). Three years later, WWF helped the Kenyan government create its first rhino sanctuary in Lake Nakuru National Park. From 1988, assistance was also provided for rhino conservation efforts in the Aberdare National Park. Thanks to the commitment of its wildlife service and private landowners, Kenya's private- and government-run rhino sanctuaries are today a valuable source of animals for reintroduction and population enhancement schemes.

Placing rhinos in sanctuaries, where funds and personnel are concentrated in relatively small areas, is proving to be a successful strategy, and one that might well turn the tide in the rhinos' recovery. Today around 48 per cent of Kenya's and 60 per cent of Zimbabwe's rhinos are held in managed sanctuaries and conservancies.

RhinoIn addition to supporting sanctuaries, WWF continued to provide funding to protect free-ranging rhinos throughout the 1980s. Over CHF2.5 million went to support rhino conservation in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve, Zambia's Luangwa Valley, and the Zambezi Valley in Zimbabwe. By this time, the poaching wave was reaching its peak in Southern Africa and, as had happened a decade earlier in east Africa, efforts to halt the slaughter were proving unsuccessful. By the mid-1980s, with most of their own rhinos already killed, Zambian poachers turned their attention to neighbouring Zimbabwe. Between 1982 and 1992 the number of black rhinos in Zimbabwe dropped by an estimated 80 per cent, from 2,010 to 411. By the end of 1993, Zimbabwe's black rhino population had fallen to just 280 animals.

Up until the mid-1980s, much of WWF's effort was aimed at trying to save free-ranging rhino populations in relatively large protected areas - a strategy that proved largely ineffective in the final analysis. In the wave of poaching that swept down the continent, most of the black rhinos that once roamed the vast, unfenced wildlife areas of the Tsavo and Selous ecosystems, the Luangwa and Zambezi Valleys, and Botswana's Chobe/Moremi ecosystem were lost. It is clear that even WWF's attempts to support wildlife departments were insufficient and too thinly spread to halt the decline.

Changes in approach were obviously needed and from 1986, WWF and other donors helped Zimbabwe and Kenya to translocate the majority of their remaining black rhinos from vulnerable areas to well-protected state and private lands. The severe losses of the 1980s gave rise to a period of innovation in rhino management techniques.



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