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).

Zimbabwe: Gonarezhou National Park to reintroduce black rhinos in 2020! [update]

update (18 November 2020): According to the Centre for African Journalists (CAJ) News Africa, the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust (GTC) has graduated 39 game rangers at Chipinda Pools airstrip in Zimbabwe ahead of the re-introduction of rhinoceros in Gonarezhou National Park. The animals are to be moved to the park before the end of 2020.

update (21 July 2020): According to a "Park Update 13 July 2020" by Gonarezhou National Park on Facebook, work is currently underway to fence the 130 000 acres Intensive Protection Zone (IPZ) in which the black rhinos will be reintroduced to roam wild. So far 12 km of the fence line has been erected. The IPZ is located inside Gonarezhou National Park. We'll keep you posted!

The Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe is set to reintroduce over 20 black rhinos into its 500 000 hectares of remote and rugged bush country in 2020. The rhino population in what is now the country's second largest National Park got wiped out two times. The original population of black rhinos in the area was killed sometime between the 1930s and 1940s. Between 1969 and 1977 - Gonarezhou National Park was declared a National Park in 1975 - a total of 77 black rhinos got reintroduced into the area. The population grew to 140 animals before the civil war in neighbouring Mozambique resulted in the closure of Gonarezhou National Park to the public. During the closure, poachers wiped out the entire rhino population in Gonarezhou National Park for the second time. The last rhino in Gonarezhou National Park was killed in 1994.


 
Gonarezhou National Park is located in south-eastern Zimbabwe and is managed by the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust, 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).