- Nine female white rhinos completed a two-day translocation to Mozambique’s Zinave National Park on June 6, joining 30 white rhinos and 22 black rhinos introduced since 2022.
- The arrival caps nearly 10 years of reintroduction work and establishes what Peace Parks Foundation calls the first viable founder breeding populations of both rhino species in the park in decades.
- Five black rhino calves and two white rhino calves have already been born and raised successfully in Zinave, which conservationists hope can eventually help repopulate other Mozambican parks.
Nine female white rhinos have completed a journey to a new home, capping nearly a decade of work to bring a breeding population of the animals back to a park once emptied by civil war.
The rhinos, transferred from South Africa’s Manketti Game Reserve, arrived at Mozambique’s Zinave National Park on June 6 after a two-day translocation. They join 30 white rhinos and 22 black rhinos already introduced to Zinave since 2022.
“[The translocation] went fantastically well,” Antony Alexander, a regional manager for Peace Parks Foundation, told Mongabay. “I’m sure they’re happy to be in the wild again.”
Zinave, which spans roughly 1,580 square miles in southern Mozambique’s Inhambane province, was once known as a “silent park” after decades of civil war wiped out much of its wildlife.
“You could almost sense the very low levels of life with insects and birds and smells and sounds,” Alexander said, describing the park before restoration work began. “That’s changed dramatically over the last 10 years.”
Since 2016, Zinave has also welcomed back critically endangered black rhino and Selous’ zebra, along with endangered African savanna elephant, vulnerable leopard and spotted hyena. Rhinos, as bulk grazers, play an outsized role in that recovery by keeping grass levels down.
“You can imagine if you don’t have rhinos in the park, which was the situation in Zinave National Park when we first started 10 years ago. We were at a park that had very high grass levels, which is a very large fire hazard,” Alexander told Mongabay.
Lower grass levels also make the ecosystem friendlier to species like impala and wildebeest, he added.
Five black rhino calves and two white rhino calves have already been born and successfully raised in Zinave, and Alexander said the park’s rhinos could eventually help repopulate other parks across the country as the population grows.
“Of course, it doesn’t come easily; one’s got to spend many years preparing for it,” he said.
