NGO Buys 2,000 Rhinos From Private Breeder To Set Them Free

A non-profit conservation organization has purchased the world's largest population of privately owned white rhinos with the aim of "rewilding" the animals over the next 10 years.

The NGO, African Parks, has taken over ownership of a breeding operation known as Platinum Rhino—which currently holds around 2,000 southern white rhinos—it said in a press release. The world's largest captive rhino breeding operation is based at a roughly 21,000-acre ranch in South Africa's North West province, which borders Botswana.

The 2,000 southern white rhinos that live across the site represent up to around 15 percent of the world's remaining wild rhino population, according to African Parks.

The southern white rhino is one of two remaining subspecies of white rhino. The other is the northern white rhino, which is functionally extinct, given that just two non-breeding females of this subspecies are still alive.

The southern white rhino population reached a historic low of around 30-40 animals in the 1930s. However, effective conservation measures helped the population to rebound, reaching approximately 20,000 individuals by 2012.

In the decade or so since, however, the southern white rhino population has fallen again—largely as a result of poaching for the illegal wildlife trade—and it numbers less than 13,000 individuals today. In addition to poaching, other factors such as ongoing habitat loss have brought the population under significant pressure.

Platinum Rhino's former owner, multimillionaire John Hume, put his animals up for auction online on April 26 this year, with the opening bid set at 182 million South African Rand ($10 million).

Hume, a South African property developer turned wildlife rancher, was unable to find a new owner, throwing the future safety and security of his herd into doubt.

Hume put his operation up for sale after running into financial difficulty, having reportedly poured in the equivalent of $150 million of his own money into rhino breeding over the past three decades, South African news outlet Daily Maverick reported.

The aim of Hume's initiative, which has received both praise and criticism, involved breeding rhinos and harvesting their horns without harming them, before selling the body parts to buyers in East Asia where such products are used in traditional medicine. (Rhino horns, like human fingernails, are made of keratin and can grow back.) This was done to dissuade poachers from killing the animals, according to the Platinum Rhino website.

Platinum Rhino had planned to release 100 rhinos back into the wild every year but was unable to secure funding to make this happen and Hume eventually ran out of funds to keep his operation going.

African Parks announced on Monday that it had purchased the property with the aim of releasing the 2,000 rhinos into the wild over the next decade. The non-profit said it made the move after numerous concerned individuals had reached out asking it to step in to prevent a potential conservation crisis.

The transaction took place with the support of the South African government and the African Rhino Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The purchase only went through after the non-profit had secured emergency funding.

African Parks aims to establish new populations or bolster already existing—and strategically chosen—wild populations in order to secure the future of the declining species.

The NGO will phase out the breeding program over time and turn Hume's property into a rhino sanctuary. The project will end once all the animals have been released into the wild. The endeavor will be one of the largest continent-wide rewilding projects to take place for any species.

Newsweek has contacted African Parks for comment via email.