Rebel army joins conservation project to save White Rhino

A wildlife expert has revealed how he convinced an African rebel army, which has fought a bloody struggle with the Ugandan government for nearly two decades, to sign up to a conservation project to save one of the world’s rarest animals.

Lawrence Anthony, founder of the South African environmental group the Earth Organisation, persuaded the Lord’s Resistance Army — the leaders of which are wanted for war crimes by the international criminal court — to join with scientists to protect the northern white rhino, of which only four are thought to remain in the wild. As part of an ongoing peace process, the rebels have pledged not to harm the animals and to tell wildlife experts if they see one.
“I just wondered what on earth could be done to protect the last of this species in the wild,” Anthony said, adding: “Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.”
Environmentalists feared the worst last year when the LRA took up residence in the Garamba national park, a sprawling and densely forested reserve close to the Ugandan border in the far north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The park is home to the last of the northern white rhino, as well as other rare species including the highly endangered okapi and the pygmy Congo giraffe.
If the estimated four animals can be kept alive, conservationists hope to breed them with a handful of rhinos in zoos in San Diego and Prague. 
— The Guardian

Contested territory

The world’s most endangered species

● Giant Panda: fewer than 1,000 left
● Black Rhino: less than 3,000
● Tiger: less than 6,000
● Hawaiian monk seal: 1,000
● Florida manatees: as few as 2,000
● Black-footed ferret: population of 500,000 in 1920, now only 129 survive

David Adam