[ad_1]
Credit: Ken Bohn, San Diego Global Zoo
Above: Eric, an eastern black rhino, weighing 2,500 pounds, shortly after arriving in his new home in a Serengeti Wildlife Sanctuary in Tanzania on September 11, 2018.
A black rhinoceros from East Africa, born and raised in San Diego, is adapting to a new home in Tanzania. San Diego Zoo Global has donated Eric to conservationists in hopes of reintroducing endangered species into the Serengeti. KPBS environmental reporter Erik Anderson recently spoke with Grant Burden of Singita Grumeti Fund. It is one of the leaders of the efforts to bring the black rhinoceros from East Africa back to Tanzania. Burden also monitors the evolution of Eric's transition.
Q: How is Eric doing now that he's been in Africa for a few months?
A: About a week to ten days after his arrival, he was back to normal, comfortable, as usual, in the zoo. And he maintained that until the end. We are therefore extremely satisfied with his ability to manage the transfer and make the transition.
Q: Has there been any opportunity to interact with any of the other animals that are there, in this pen where you keep it?
A: From late December to mid-December, we hope to free Eric from this four-hectare paddock in an area of 235 hectares. Which currently houses another black rhinoceros cow of about 17 years old. We have documented, with the use of track cameras, their interactions where they collided with the barrier (paddock) and where they almost touched. You know, horn to horn through the logs. All very civil for the most part. And it really went well – their introductions.
Q: Is there something that has surprised you about Eric?
A: Well yeah. I think the only thing that happens when you get humans, you get rhinos. And I think his temperament is such that he is in fact well suited to having undertaken this transfer from America to Tanzania.
Q: Do you fear his interactions with larger animals, such as elephants?
A: A 1,600-kilogram animal is not going to take a 6-ton elephant bull. And that's pretty much the only animal that could actually cause a rhino's mortal injury. Anything smaller, a buffalo, a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros will be able to hold his and there is very very little possibility that the kinds of altercations or meetings in the bush will turn into more serious things only a simple showcase.
Q: And how long before having access to a larger area of the park?
A: Eric's move to San Diego was almost a proof of concept for the first phase of a larger project – the Rhino Project – with which the Grumeti Fund is collaborating, in collaboration with the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority and the Ministry of Finance. Natural Resources and Tourism. And in 2019, by June or July, we hope to have another 12 rhinos, black rhinoceros from East Africa, which are currently in a situation out of reach in South Africa. The situation as a whole is that in mid-2019, Eric, the bull, and Laikipia, the cow, will participate in the release of a group of 12 animals, 14 in total. Eric could be a free black rhinoceros that breeds and breeds black rhinos in the larger Serengeti ecosystem. There is no barrier between the Grumeti concessions and the Serengeti National Park, the central area of the Serengeti ecosystem. So Eric's genetic material, which comes from East Africa, you know that his lineage originated in East Africa in the late 1970s and that he is now brought back to Serengeti is really very precious.
To view PDF documents, download Acrobat Reader.
Source link
