Where are rhinos safest?

Abstract

During 2020, South Africa reported 394 poached rhinoceros (rhino) carcasses -34 at private properties and 360 at state properties. 1 Poaching since 2008 has degraded South Africa's rhino populations. By the start of 2020, South Africa had 14 410 southern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum simum) and 1900 black rhinos, mostly south-central (Diceros bicornis bicornis) and south-western black rhino (D. b. minor) sub-species and a few nonnative eastern black rhinos (D. b. michaeli) (Table 1).Rhinos occur in national parks managed by SANParks, reserves managed by provincial conservation authorities and non-state areas comprising private and communal ownership. Of these, the Kruger National Park (Kruger) has experienced the highest number of poaching losses reported for state land. Kruger has an operational area the size of Israel (approximately 2 000 000 ha). In contrast, privately owned nature reserves containing rhinos in South Africa have a national average of 10 000 ha (1 300 000 ha distributed across 132 properties studied 2 ). Therefore, privately owned reserves are, on average, approximately 200 times smaller than the size of Kruger. National parks other than Kruger, provincial and communal reserves are also smaller relative to Kruger, with the other national parks averaging approximately 33 000 ha, excluding Addo Elephant National Park (Addo), which is 173 000 ha. Addo, however, has five disconnected sections, three of which have rhinos present.

Importance of private and communal lands to sustainable conservation of Africa's rhinoceroses

“…This difference in average resourcing per rhino between Kruger National Park and private land highlights the funding challenges encountered by state parks (Lindsey et al 2021) and may help explain the lower poaching rates on private land. It is also possible that the large size of Kruger National Park (20,000 km 2 ) and its rhino population (2607 white rhinos) makes rhino security more challenging than in much smaller areas (averaging ~100 km 2 and 34 white rhinos) (Clements et al 2020;Ferreira and Dziba 2021).…”

Contribution of private game ranching and captive bred operations in South Africa to White rhinoCeratotherium simumspecies survival conservation

“…Although cognisanze must be taken of the land size of the state-owned protected areas, such as that of the KNP (1.98 Mha) versus that of the non-state owned areas, and the subsequent difficulties reported to achieve operational efficiency in situational awareness, integrity management and access control, when comparisons of the rhino population sizes, population management and poaching rates on these smaller protected areas compared to that of the KNP, is done [55], the Contribution of Private Game Ranching and CBOs in S.A. to White rhino conservation results show that provincial and private reserves do significantly better than the KNP itself under the current situation in South Africa (Table 4). 1 numbers for KNP declined to 2,607 at end of 2020.…”

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“…Although cognisanze must be taken of the land size of the stateowned protected areas, such as that of the KNP (1.98 Mha) versus that of the non-state owned areas, and the subsequent difficulties reported to achieve operational efficiency in situational awareness, integrity management and access control, when compari-sons of the rhino population sizes, population management and poaching rates on these smaller protected areas compared to that of the KNP, is done [55], the results show that provincial and private reserves do significantly better than the KNP itself under the current situation in South Africa (TABLE 4). 1 Numbers for KNP declined to 2,607 at end of 2020.…”