Over the years, Ugandan conservation bodies have been and still trying to protect the rhinos in any way possible. Now with the recent birth of a new baby rhino, the sanctuary has registered an increase by 1 which is good news and cause for celebration to the conservationists. This new baby, born yesterday 28th March 2016 makes baby number 11 in a period of 7 years and all coming from only 3 breeding age females. This means that the number is steadily increasing and hopefully in the near future, there will be enough rhinos to distribute to other national parks as per the plan. The plan involves distributing rhinos to other tourists’ sites so that the sanctuary is not the only place to find them in the whole country. This will help in making them more accessible to so many people and more marketable unlike now where it sometimes becomes hard for some people to visit them especially when on a Uganda safari that is heading say to western Uganda which is in the opposite direction of the sanctuary.
The news about the birth of this rhino was confirmed minutes after its birth by the Executive Director of the RFU and of the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, Angie Genade. According to her this notable achievement is a result of the very favorable breeding environment at the sanctuary, therefore hope for more babies to be born. She added that the rate at which these rhinos are giving birth which is at over only 2 years interval seems to be faster than what is recorded on any other conservancies around.
This sanctuary begun with only four adult rhinos, two of which were males and the other two were females and were imported from Solio Game Reserve located in the Kenya’s central highlands close to Mweiga. Later 2 more were introduced and these were donated by Disney’s Animal Kingdom found in Florida USA.
Before the sanctuary opened, The Rhino Fund imported 2 more rhinos and they were kept at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre but these have not so far added any value to this restocking exercise which is a shame to the UWEC. The Ziwa sanctuary however has done a very good job considering the fact that they have managed to get these so many births. For that matter therefore, congratulations are in order to the executive director Angie and her whole team working at Ziwa sanctuary which includes the rangers, the veterinaries and support staff.
