John Towey / Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society
A Florida zoo team recently traveled to Zimbabwe after they were asked to help a white rhino suffering from a parasitic eye infection.
They came up with a “ridiculous idea” to corral the wild animal, earn its trust as if it were a horse or dog, and administer eye drops and other care.
It took place outside of Hwange National Park, where a special project called the Community Rhino Conservation Initiative was ongoing to reintroduce members of the southern white rhino subspecies onto communal lands to give locals a stake in the animal’s future.
The Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society CEO Margo McKnight was visiting the area in August of last year when she was alerted to a problem and asked to help: a male rhino named Thunza seemed to be on the verge of scratching himself blind.
“This rhino had bleeding eyes. He was rubbing his eyes,” said the ironically named Mark Butcher, managing director at a local safari lodge supporting the initiative.
“And I was looking at a potential where this guy was gonna lose his eyesight. And this is in a pilot project that’s got fantastic vision for a future for conservation throughout Africa.”
McKnight, along with several animal behaviorists from the Palm Beach Zoo who arrived later, proposed a method they’d been developing with their own animals, where the injured or ill creatures are desensitized to caregiving through their own volition. The essence of what that entailed, however, struck the locals as beyond the pale.
“Believe me, we didn’t think of it; it was a completely ridiculous idea to us,” Daniel Terblanche, a security manager at the safari lodge, told AP. “But without trying all of the things that we could to rectify that situation, we would have been in trouble, I think.”
It entailed coaxing the rhinos into corrals using their favorite food, before gradually helping them grow accustomed to the presence and touch of humans through squirting water on their face, petting them, and pulling gently on their horns.
RHINOS RECOVERING:
Within two weeks they were able to get Thunza to come close to them, stay put while the team administered eye drops directly into the infected eye, and train the local security force to do the same in case the infection should return.
The Florida zoo team left excited both about Thunza’s long-term health prospects.
The southern white rhinoceros is the most numerous in the world, and the most widely dispersed across Africa. Like all rhino, they are at severe risk of poaching for their horns, but when measured across the whole of their range, are not considered endangered.
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