Imvelo Safari Lodges – Camelthorn – Walking with Rhinos
Imvelo Safari Lodges are bringing more white rhino back to the Hwange ecosystem, and engaging a growing number of communities. For World Ranger Day 2024, let’s celebrate the Cobras Community Wildlife Protection scouts who will be protecting Mlevu Sanctuary’s two new rhinos, their second community sanctuary. Imvelo’s Ngamo Rhino Sanctuary successfully saw the relocation of two white rhinos to the Hwange ecosystem in 2022 in a programme which is funding the running of the Ngamo clinic amid other social benefits. Now, plans are in place to bring two more rhinos to the new Mlevu Sanctuary, not far from Ngamo.
There is a a special one-off opportunity to go behind the scenes and join the rhino in their release.
Southern Hwange saw the last white rhino in the early 2000s following a period of intense poaching. Imvelo’s Community Rhino Conservation Initiative (CRCI) was conceived to reintroduce rhinos to Hwange – with better protection this time and to support the communities living on the south-eastern edge of the park. In a world-first, CRCI reintroduced rhinos onto communal land, to benefit the local people through employment, education, human-wildlife conflict alleviation and direct revenue. CRCI piloted the project with the first rhino sanctuary at Ngamo in May 2022. Since then, Thuza and Kusasa have been visited by guests from around the world as well as by local school children and community members. They are protected 24/7 by trained and armed Cobras Community Wildlife Protection scouts, recruited and employed from the local villages. The sanctuary is on communal land adjacent to the park and, through high-tech fencing, it serves to protect villages from problematic wildlife overspilling from the park. Part of rhino viewing fees from tourists go to the communities for them to allocate to community development projects of their choice – a part of the revenue generated from tourism fees funds the local Ngamo Clinic and keeps it operational.
The second sanctuary at Mlevu is expecting rhino in September 2024 with a third rhino sanctuary being established thereafter. Eventually, a large protected area will consolidate the community sanctuaries into a conservancy that will also include Hwange National Park land, to create a large buffer zone between the park and communal lands. This will not only minimise human-wildlife conflict but also accommodate a viable population of free roaming white and black rhino, and other wildlife, that will provide community upliftment.
TODAY, THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING CONSERVATION PROJECTS IN AFRICA:
• It’s about rhino, arguably the most threatened large African mammal, and its reintroduction to a habitat where it was once prolific
• It’s about rhino on community land, not in a government park or on private land
• It’s about local people being custodians of their wildlife and land resources and benefitting directly from these
• It’s about creating a self-sustaining buffer zone on Hwange’s boundary to protect one of Africa’s great parks and the communities who live around it by alleviating human-wildlife conflicts
• It’s about offering guests extraordinary wildlife experiences with a positive impact on local communities.
