Why the moving of Mark the rhino is no mean feat

Rangers work to push a one of the rhinos that were relocated to the new Tsavo Rhino Sanctuary from the Nairobi National Park. [Jeckonia Otieno/Standard]

It is 10.30 in the morning and a helicopter is flying low over Nairobi National Park.

From its open door, Michael Njoroge takes careful aim. His target? A female rhino scrambling for cover.

The shot hits the frightened animal in the back of the left thigh. The rhino is lucky that Dr Njoroge is not a poacher, and that the shot was from a tranquilliser gun.

Massive operation

Njoroge is leading a team from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) in a relocation operation targeting 14 rhinos.

The animals are being moved to a newly established sanctuary at Tsavo East National Park from both the Nairobi and Nakuru national parks.

Herculean does not half describe the task of relocating 14 mature rhinos.

With the average female rhino weighing about 1,500 kilogrammes and males averaging about 2,150 kilogrammes, it means Njoroge and his team will move more than 21 tonnes by road for more than 400 kilometres.

The relocation teams have moved six rhinos named Mark, Linus, Faith, Cheptei, Carol and Bolt.

Mark was the sixth one to be relocated. She was moved on Friday last week in an operation that began with a 15 minute search that took the teams to the eastern part of the Nairobi National Park.

After the darting, the helicopter continued hovering over the scared Mark, who was now running around in circles. The more she ran, the faster the tranquilliser took effect.

On the ground, a team of about 15 officers were waiting patiently.

Their assignment was to quickly secure Mark after ensuring that she was not injured, fix a transmitter to her small horn and load her into a container and onto a truck for translocation.

The entire operation had to be quick and precise, or the team would end up either with a dead animal or 1.5 tonne-plus angry beast.

 “The entire process, from the point the rhino is darted to the point it enters the cage should take 20 minutes, which makes precision necessary,” says Njoroge.

The translocation will see eight rhinos moved from Nairobi and six from Nakuru.

According to KWS, the two parks are groaning under the growing weight of the beasts.

“We move them when we surpass ecological and social carrying capacity or when we identify new suitable secure habitat,” says Linus Kariuki, the coordinator of KWS’ Kenya Rhino Programme.

The 100-square-kilometre sanctuary in Tsavo, fitted with a solar-powered fence and three solar-powered boreholes, is being supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Kenya to the tune of about Sh100 million.

According to Yusuf Adan, who coordinates WWF-Kenya’s rhino programme, the conservation of the black rhino is part of a wider plan to increase their numbers in the country.

“The black rhinos population globally is 5,000, with the third largest population being in Kenya. But the country lost a good number of rhinos at the height of poaching between 2012 and 2014,” said Mr Adan.

Wildlife officials say the country has a strategy to achieve a five per cent increase in rhino population annually.

But for five years, the target could not be met until 2017, when Kenya saw a seven per cent growth that called for a new sanctuary.

Tsavo sanctuary

The creation of the Tsavo sanctuary came with its share of challenges.

To begin with, it was being set up in the middle of a national park, raising the spectre of clashes with other wildlife.

Experts feared that during dry seasons, elephants would break the fence to get to the water holes in the sanctuary.

“To solve this problem, watering holes have been established outside so that elephants do not have to break into the sanctuary,” says Adan.

The rhinos that have been moved will stay two weeks in the sanctuary being released into the wild in batches.

Kenya now has 16 rhino sanctuaries in national parks, game reserves and private conservancies.

Mark arrived safely at the Tsavo sanctuary at about 10.30pm — 12 hours after she was tranquillised.