For white rhinos, guarded condition is good news

Under the watchful eyes of 180 well-motivated guards, the world population of northern white rhinos jumped nearly 20% last year (1989) with the births of four babies to the rhinos in Zaire's Garamba National Park. Now numbering 26 up from a mere 15 in 1983 this subspecies of the white rhinoceros survives only in the 3,000-square-mile park. It once ranged through five countries in Central Africa. The heavy poaching that nearly wiped out the sub-species and which together with habitat destruction, disease, and drought, has reduced all rhino populations by 85 percent in the past 25 years, came to a halt in Garamba six years ago when a vigourous rhino protection programme was launched. The Zairean government, with the help of conservation groups, increased the number of guards, raised their monthly salaries from US$ 4 to US$ 16, and provided uniforms, better equipment, and other benefits and pay incentives. Muhindo Mesi, the park warden, plans to pursue yet another approach to save the rhinos in Garamba: actively courting the support of the 100,000 or so people living around the perimeter of the park, through a conservation education programme and, possibly, by improving goat and sheep herds to reduce the temptations for villagers to come to the park for meat.