Zimbabwe: Gonarezhou National Park to reintroduce black rhinos in 2021! [update]

update (02 August 2021): According to an announcement by the Gonarezhou National Park on facebook, the first rhinos have walked out of their holding bomas into the wilderness.

update (29 July 2021): According to the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) more than twenty black rhinos have been released into Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe lately with the animals expected to grow into an International Union for Conservation Nature (IUCN) Classified Key 1 Black Rhino population.

update (27 July 2021): Tinashe Farawo, spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks), announced on twitter earlier today that the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust has successfully reintroduced black rhinos in Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe.

After 14 years of discussions, planning, multiple feasibility studies, field preparations and work between the founders and partners of the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust (GCT), Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA) and Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), 2021 is planned to be the year that Black Rhino return to Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe after being absent for the last 27 years. The re-introduction of the highly endangered species represents an immense opportunity to not only return an important megaherbivore to the Gonarezhou ecosystem but to establish a new, viable metapopulation of critically endangered Black Rhino in a National Park in Zimbabwe. The rhinos will be released into Gonarezhou’s 130 000 acres Intensive Protection Zone (IPZ).

Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe's second largest National Park, is located in the south-eastern part of the country and is managed by the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust (GTC), an innovative new model for protected area management drawn up between the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA) and the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS).