Dispatches
Ziwa Ranch Rhino Sanctuary: Becoming okay with the AK…47, that is.
March 7, 2008
We headed north on the Kampala/Gulu road toward the Ziwa Ranch Rhino Sanctuary.
The day was moving to dusk and as we drove toward park headquarters. The day patrol rangers bike toward us as they close their shifts. Charged with protecting the rhinos from poachers, rangers must have equal footing in confrontations – explaining the AK-47s slung over their shoulders as they slowly pedaled toward the main gate - they smile and wave as we motor past.
Head ranger Godfried gave us a tour of the headquarters and a quick history of the property. Formerly a cattle ranch, a local rancher donated 35 square kilometers to the Rhino Fund Uganda to establish the sanctuary. A sizeable gift from the EU allowed them to install a solar-powered electric fence around the perimeter of the site and 4 white rhinos from Kenya were then brought to the property. More recently, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida donated an additional pair of white rhinos.
That evening, we met Rhino Fund Uganda executive director Heidi Cragg – a plucky, sun burnished South African woman with a passion for wildlife conservation.
Her projects include a rhinoceros breeding project (their first calf is due in weeks), community education + outreach programs along with sourcing the local community for rangers and sanctuary support staff.
In Africa, rhinos are hunted by poachers for the exceptional price they can get for their horns, valued for their perceived medicinal power. Remarkably, rhino horn is actually made of hair attached to the skin of the rhino, not the bone, so it can be harvested without killing the rhino. Bullets, however, are cheaper than rhinoceros tranquilizers. Rhino advocates had taken to the practice of removing the horn before it was discovered that poachers would kill hornless rhinos to spite conservationists. The message is simple - you deprive me of my bounty, I’ll kill the animal anyway. Bush meat poachers ply the edges of the electric fence, running snares underneath onto the sanctuary property to capture bushbuck, diker and wild pig. Farmers quietly maneuver their cattle onto the property’s edge to graze illegally – rangers “arrest” cows on a regular basis and she’s discovered that recent interloping herds have been the property of local public officials making enforcement a frustrating affair, to say the least.
Supported solely by donation, the Rhino Fund’s budget is unpredictable at best. A recent spate of dried up coffers forced Heidi to give up 24 hour ranger patrols, leaving the rhinos unprotected from poachers during the evenings, incurring a series of dread-filled, sleepless nights before the Uganda Wildlife Authority donated 4 rangers so Rhino Fund could resume 24 hour patrols.
Heidi shared her plans to make the sanctuary less reliant on donor funding through ecotourism, attracting more visitors by expanding and improving guest facilities with the construction of a restaurant, bar and swimming pool along with more overnight accommodations. She’s working to increase her white rhino count, introducing black rhinos along with broad grazing, non-cattle mammals, such as zebra, to manage grassland overgrowth and offer more variety in wildlife viewing.
Room and board are available to visitors and volunteers and the predominantly solar powered facilities offered presently are clean and simple - with the menagerie of wildlife, visitors spend of their waking hours viewing rhinos, hippos, bushbuck, vervit monkeys and marveling at the prolific birdlife on the property.
A tireless champion of the sanctuary, natural resource and wildlife conservation, Heidi sees daily challenges, both planned + unexpected (flat tires and bush fires, anyone?), as a shot of adrenaline, the stuff that makes life interesting, announcing, unprompted, “I just love it here”.
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