 Reference Base  Report to the Government of Botswana on an ecological sur... |
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Child, G., 1968. Report to the Government of Botswana on an ecological survey of Northeastern Botswana. Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, no. TA 2563, pp. 1-160
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| Location: |
Africa - Southern Africa - Botswana |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
Black Rhino |
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It in well established that black rhino once had a wide geographical distribution extending over much of northeastern Botswana, and that numbers have been great reduced in some areas within the last 20 to 30 years. Bushmen claim an individual has lived for some years along the Rhodesian border between Kakulwani and Panda ma Tenga. Another was seen in the Sidudu valley about 10 years ago, and one was speared but not killed by a bushman near Kasane about this time and is claimed to have been the same animal which was stabbed by a policeman from Kachikau a short while later.
Two game scouts found the spoor of an individual which had descended the sand ridge to water at the Chobe river, between Ngoma and Muchenjo in June or July 1963. One of these men had been a cattle driver on the stock route across the eastern Mababe and claimed to have found rhino spoor south of the Goha hills on several occasions in the late forties, although he could not remember personally having seen an animal in this area. Two professional hunters reported spoor on the sand ridge between Gohan and the Savuti and between the Savuti and the Linyanti in 1963 and 1964 and the presence of rhino in the former area has been confirmed by staff of the Tsetse Control Department.
Game ranger S. Holmes a Court followed spoor and contacted a rhino on the Magwigwe sand ridge south of the Savuti in 1964, and there are reports of the species in Botswana near the Kwando river and on Chief's island in the Okavango swamps where crocodile hunters under Mr. 'Bobby' Wilmot and a W.N.L.A. air crew both reported seeing three animals about six years ago. Wilmot's party also encountered two in mopane woodland between Jovorega and Tsotsoroga in 1963 or 1964, where they wore also seen about the same time by another reliable independent observer. The present author's party found and photographed spoor some eight miles south of the Gubatsa hills in the western Mababe in October 1965 and found droppings about the same distance cast of Jovorega on the boundary of the proposed extension 'C' (figure 14) of the Game Reserve, in June 1966. An individual was contacted on the northeastern edge of the Savuti 'swamp' in January 1967. Finally there have been two reports of rhino along the Rhodesian border south of Panda ma Tenga which may represent the wanderings of animals released into the Wankie National Park since 1961.
The extent to which rhino numbers have declined during recent years is borne out by the recollections of several old bushmen, one of whom in particular could remember seeing something like 50 different animals around the foot of the Goha hills when he lived there during his youth (probably about 40 years ago). It is, however, possible that rhino are more numerous than. the few recent observations suggest, as they are all from remote unpopulated areas, but if the present relic population is to survive then it will require special protection. It will be necessary to determine where the majority of the animals occur and then to ensure that they are not hunted, at least until numbers build up. Rhino can tolerate a wide range of habitat types, but are usually associated with permanent open water, and present habitat conditions, including wide-scale bush encroachment, may be beneficial for the species, which is, however, very susceptible to hunting. Roth and Child (in press) have shown that the recruitment rate to the breeding herd is low and of the order of 7 percent per annum, so that the survival of a population is very dependent upon the longevity of the adults.
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