FEATURE - Returning rhinos herald revival of Kenyan park
Date: 19-Mar-02
Country: KENYA
Author: Matthew Green
Thirteen years later, rhinos are returning to Kenya's Meru National Park, leading a procession of animals that sounds like a scene from Noah's Ark.
Meru has started what is described as east Africa's first big project to reintroduce animals to an area decimated by poachers, hoping to protect endangered species and revive a reserve haunted by a violent past.
"We're bringing in everything from elephants to impala," said senior warden Mark Jenkins. "We're not talking about 10 or 20 animals, we're talking about hundreds, thousands of animals," he said in his office in the park's headquarters.
For Jenkins, who grew up in the park that his father ran before him, the programme is the chance to exorcise the ghosts of Meru's darkest days and tempt back visitors.
Five white rhinos were slaughtered in the park in April 1989 in their supposedly protected enclosure. A French couple were murdered in the reserve a few months later. Then a British professor vanished. His burnt out car was discovered eventually, but his body was never found.
Meru has now tightened security, trucked in the first of its new arrivals to join resident giraffes, hippos and gazelles, and tourist numbers are increasing.
But the threat of poaching has not gone away. Kenyan conservationists say South African proposals to legalise trade in white rhino products threaten to send a new wave of gunmen to inflict fresh horrors on their charges.
HORN OF AFRICA
Resting in the shade of an acacia tree, looking more like a rock than a rhino, the old bull Mukora is a symbol of hope for Kenya's threatened species.
After the five rhinos were slaughtered, Mukora was moved to Lake Nakuru National Park, leaving Meru empty of rhinos until the bull returned last year.
"He's quite a special animal," said Jenkins, parking his jeep just a few yards (metres) from the lump of grey hide with twin horns. "He's probably the oldest rhino in the country."
The 30-year-old white rhino has a fighting streak. His name can be translated as "naughty one" in Kikuyu and Mukora has killed seven other rhinos in tussles over territory.
Three younger white rhinos were moved to Meru National Park in March from private ranches in Kenya, while five more are due to follow in July. Radio transmitters placed in their horns will help rangers track their progress.
Wardens will keep the rhinos in an enclosure before gradually releasing them into the wild, hoping to set up monitoring systems that could be used to replicate the exercise with the rarer and more temperamental black rhino.
By releasing black rhinos into the 950 square km (365 square mile) park, conservationists will provide a new breeding ground and release the pressure on Kenya's overcrowded sanctuaries.
An estimated 20,000 black rhinos roamed Kenya in 1970, but their numbers have crashed to about 460, mainly due to poaching. The Kenya Wildlife Service estimates that Africa's black rhino numbers have fallen 90 percent just in the past two decades.
For Sam Ngethe, who has worked at Kenya Wildlife Service since the 1960s and now is in charge of moving rhinos to Meru, the new scheme provides new hope for traumatised friends.
"It's amazing, before there was a lot of poaching...if a rhino could smell or hear you, they would just charge, nowadays the rhino will just freeze," said the warden, demonstrating an eerie whistle he uses to lure rhinos from the bush.
Meru aims to introduce 600 more elephants, the park has already brought in 20 of the world's 2,000 remaining Grevy's zebras and there are plans to release the oryx antelope.
SHOTS IN THE NIGHT
Uniformed rangers carrying semi-automatic G-3 rifles are vital to Meru's restocking programme.
Jenkins has boosted patrols, cleared overgrown trails and airstrips and bought new radios for his men since he took over in July 1999, reducing the threat to animals like Mukora.
Rising slowly to stand on his squat legs as his visitors approach, Mukor