Arnoud Quanjer Wildlife Photography

When I was in the Kruger in May of 2000 with my wife we were lucky to stumble upon the relocation of two white rhino's. These animals were being moved by the SANParks game capture unit.

We saw the Kruger Park helicopter flying around we knew that something special was going on. We hurried to the spot where we last saw the helicopter flying around, and saw that it had just landed. At the same time a small army of park rangers, game capture personell and staff arrived in a number of vehicles. They all jumped out of their vehicles and ran to what later turned out to be a mother white rhino and her calf. They had both been darted from the helicopter and were lying some 100 meters from the road. As soon as we saw what was happening we jumped out of the car and joined the rangers who at that time were unloading all sorts of gear from their trucks and were running to the rhinos. Normally if you pull a stunt like getting out of your car in the middle of the park then the rangers will tell you to get back into your car immediately and they will tell you that if you pull a stunt like that again that you will be in big trouble (and rightly so). In this case the first person to step up to me was Douw Grobler, who at the time was the chief vetenarian of the Kruger National Park. I guess he was in a really good mood because after a short conversation with him he decided that my wife and I could stay with an other group of people that accompanied him (American vetenarians and a film crew). It probably helped that I could understand Afrikaans :)

The two rhino's that they had sedated were going to be relocated to one of the other National Parks in South Africa because there were too many white rhino's in that part of the KNP (the south). I asked the rangers what park they would be relocated to, but they didn't know. What they were sure about was that the rhino's would be moved to the holding area in Skukuza for the time being. From there they would be moved to their final destination as soon as a decision had been made on where to move them to. We decided to stay with the group that was preparing the mother rhino for transport as the main body of rangers and vetenarians stayed with this rhino.One of the first things that happened was that this rhino was checked for pregnancy. It turned out that she wasn't pregnant by the way. I have no idea why this was important to know, and I didn't think of asking them at the time (yes, pretty stupid...). 
  
At the same time that the rhino was being checked for pregnancy blood samples were being taken and the containers in which the rhinos would be moved were being unloaded. One of the major problems in this operation is to get a heavily sedated rhino weighing some tons to stand up. To make this a bit more easy holes were dug next to the rhinos legs. By doing this it was possible to push the rhino in such a fashion that it was no longer on its side but more or less lying on its belly. {mosimage}This sounds easy, but believe me its not. It took six men just to get the rhino to lie on its belly rather that its side. After this had been accomplished the next step was to get the rhino to stand. To get the rhino to stand an antidote was injected into the rhinos ear. This antidote cancelles the effect of the sedative (at least partly). To pursuade the still partly sedated rhino to stand the rangers use big yellow 'sticks' that give an electric shock. This is very effective, but I don't think Greenpeace would approve :) It's kind of sad to see a big animal like that shake each time that it gets an electric shock.It might not be the most pleasant method to see, but it was effective because (after another dose of antidote) the rhino got up and started to move into the container that had been placed in front of it. Unfortunately the cloth that was over the rhinos eyes moved when the rhino was halfway into the container. Because it had been administred two doses of antidote it was just a bit to awake and it was not very amused with its situation. It tried to back out of the container and all hell broke loose. Everybody ran to the other side of the container to help the people already there to pull the rope that had been fastened to the rhinos horn. As I had nothing better to do I decided to help them on the rope. This however means that I don't have pictures of the panic that broke out :( 
One of the more rangers decided that if we tried to pull the rhino into the cage ourselves we would probably be in a lot of trouble so he got one of the four wheel drives and tied the rope to that car. That proved to be a bit to much for the rhino which was finally persuaded to get into the container.   
I can tell you that everybody, including me, was very pleased that the rhino decided to get into the container because nobody wanted to see a very pissed of rhino running loose. The rest of the operation was easy. The baby rhino almost ran into its container, no problem at all. After that the containers were lifted onto a truck and it was all over. The complete operation only took about 40 minutes. It was surreal to be there.
Thanks again to Douw Grobler and the rest of his team for letting us witness this operation. It was a once in a lifetime experience!

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