The extraordinary comeback of Zimbabwe’s endangered black rhinos

In the 1980s, the largest contiguous population of black rhinos left alive—over 500 animals—was in the Zambezi Valley, an area within a drainage basin twice the size of Texas that’s fed by Africa’s fourth largest river, the Zambezi. As the river enters the valley, its banks become home to hippos and crocodiles that share the inlets and shores with over 90 species of waterbirds. Beyond the river, the valley extends toward broad, flat plains and scrublands, woodlands and thickets known locally as ‘jesse.’ Elephants, cape buffalo, zebra, kudu, eland, and sable antelope, as well as lions, leopards, hyenas, warthogs, baboons, monkeys, and African wild dogs are among the species that find food and shelter in the valley. Matusadona lies at its western edge, along the shores of Lake Kariba, the world’s largest man-made lake by volume, created by the damming of the river in the 1950s.

When a commercial poaching frenzy swept its way across the continent from North Africa in the 1960s, Zimbabwe at first remained untouched—partly due to the presence of armed guerrilla militants fighting the country’s War of Liberation, who inadvertently deterred poachers. But starting in the 1970s, as international demand for rhino horn and ivory soared, heavily armed external syndicates pushed south, leading to an increase in organized poaching that killed tens of thousands of animals.

This violence eventually infiltrated the Zambezi Valley in the ‘80s and ZimParks decided to take drastic action. They organized and carried out a massive effort to track down and relocate pockets of surviving rhinos onto private game ranches and four heavily protected public safe zones called intensive protection zones (IPZs), in the hope that one day the descendants of those rhinos might return more widely to the valley.

Armed teams were trained to fight poachers “along military lines,” in the words of Glenn H. Tatham, a legendary ZimParks figure who named his plan “Operation Stronghold.” Meanwhile, rangers raced to find the valley’s remaining rhinos. “Those were animals that had escaped poaching,” says Pelham, who joined rangers on rescue operations. “They were hiding in very remote areas.”

Once an animal was located, “you had to try and dart them in a location where you could get a truck into them. Sometimes it meant waiting a couple of days until an animal got into an area that you felt you could then cut a road in. You cut a road by hand. Then we would put the animals onto a makeshift sled. You’d get some conveyor belting,” Pelham says, “and then you’d haul it by hand … through the bush until you could get up to a track that a truck could get to.”