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| Location: |
Africa - Southern Africa - Botswana |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
Black Rhino |
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'She came steadily on, followed by her calf. Taking her just behind the shoulder, 1 fired, on which she broke into a gallop, snorting loudly; but, after running a couple of hundred yards, she pulled up and sank down on to her knees stone dead, and I despatched the calf with another bullet. On examination they proved to be the common black rhinoceros of the interior.' The words of Frederick Courteney Selous. In his book 'A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa', Selous claims to have shot fifteen black rhinoceros between 1874 and 1880; the cow and calf mentioned above were shot on the banks of the Chobe river in 1874. During the same period he shot six white rhinoceros and expresses concern for their declining numbers:
'In 1877, during several months' hunting in the country to the south of Linyanti, on the river Chobe, I only saw the spoor (tracks) of two square-mouthed (white) rhinoceroses, though in 1874 I found them fairly plentiful in the same district; whilst in 1879, during eight months spent in hunting on and between the Botletlie, Mababe, Machabe, Sunta, and upper Chobe rivers, I never even saw the spoor of one of these animals, and all the Bushmen I met with said they were finished.'
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Operation rhino rescue
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