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Thanks to funding support from IUCN Save Our Species*, co-funded by the European Union**, South African National Parks (SANParks) maintains crucial monitoring of black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) in three of its Frontier region parks. This critical work improves SANParks’ knowledge about individual animals and helps protect them for future generations.

Black rhino, listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, saw an almost 96% reduction in their numbers between 1970 and 1992, reaching a minimum of only 2 600 individuals. By the end of 2017, black rhinos in Africa numbered around 5,500 individuals across all subspecies. Apart from Namibia, South Africa is the only other range state of the south-western black rhino sub-species, Diceros bicornis bicornis. SANParks is the custodian for the vast majority of these populations in Addo Elephant, Mountain Zebra and Karoo National Parks.

SANParks’ Rhino Monitoring Technician, Christiaan Lochner, says “It is critically important to continuously monitor our rhinos individually to ensure the population’s demographics and social dynamics are understood. Ultimately, monitoring aims to provide the best information possible to aid in the species’ biological and security management.” Thus, monitoring data inform biological management actions to improve population growth by addressing natural resource and rhino social constraints, which reduce birth rates and increase natural mortalities. In addition, this information informs complementary security approaches, which focus on park boundary integrity, anti-poaching, and wildlife crime disruption efforts.

Ideally, each rhino needs to be individually recognizable. For this reason, the ears of rhino are ethically notched with distinctive patterns – the combination and position of which represent a number. “While sedated, we also collect basic data on the individual rhino including sex, location, age, condition and several blood samples that are used for tests relating to the animals’ health, blood parasite loads and genetic testing,” says Lochner. In September 2021 six individuals were ear-notched and two biopsied in Addo with three individuals ear-notched in Karoo.

Black rhino are monitored in various ways, including by vehicle/foot patrols, aerial patrols and remote sensor cameras. Methods depend on the rhino’s habitat and how accessible areas are, but a combination of methods is normally used.

In Addo Elephant National Park, rangers rely on 65 cameras placed throughout the park as vegetation is very dense and animals are not easily sighted. Cameras collect between 40,000 – 60,000 photos weekly which includes around 1,300 black rhino sightings monthly. Although vegetation in Karoo and Mountain Zebra National Parks is more open, camera traps are used in Karoo to supplement sightings from foot patrols.

IUCN Save Our Species funding has ensured that these cameras have remained deployed for 24 hours a day over the past six months. Specifically, it helped keep the monitoring teams’ vehicles running to service cameras, bought batteries for the cameras and purchased an additional 30 camera traps to be deployed across the three parks. Aerial monitoring also remains crucial across the three parks. In Addo alone, the funding has supported over 50 hours of aerial monitoring that has resulted in 300 sightings of individual black rhinos across the park.

* IUCN Save Our Species aims to improve the long-term survival prospects of threatened species. It also focuses on supporting the species habitats and working with the communities who share this habitat. It achieves success by funding and coordinating conservation projects into multiple initiatives across the globe.
**The Member States of the European Union have decided to link together their know-how, resources and destinies. Together, they have built a zone of stability, democracy and sustainable development whilst maintaining cultural diversity, tolerance and individual freedoms. The European Union is committed to sharing its achievements and its values with countries and peoples beyond its borders.