West Palm Beach, Florida – Cornering a wild rhino in a small chute to administer eye drops may seem like a crazy plan. But if it’s crazy and it works, then it’s not crazy.
Animal behavior specialists at Florida’s Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society traveled to Africa in August to help an endangered white rhinoceros suffering from a potentially fatal parasitic eye infection.
Daniel Terblanche, head of security at Imvelo Safari Lodges, said no one in Zimbabwe would have thought of the plan.
“Believe me, it didn’t occur to us; it was a completely ridiculous idea for us,” Terblanche said. “But if we hadn’t tried everything we could to rectify that situation, I think we would have had problems.”
Outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the Community Rhino Conservation Initiative, supported by Imvelo Safari Lodges, is engaging local communities to reintroduce southern white rhinos onto communal lands for the first time in the country’s history.
Palm Beach Zoo CEO and President Margo McKnight was visiting the area last year when Imvelo Safari Lodges Managing Director Mark Butcher told her that a health problem with a male rhino named Thuza could jeopardize the future of the program.
“This rhino’s eyes were bleeding. He was rubbing his eyes,” Butcher said. “And I was looking at the possibility of this guy losing his sight. And this in a pilot project that has a fantastic vision for the future for conservation across Africa.”
Thad and Angi Lacinak, founders of Precision Behavior, traveled to Zimbabwe to work with explorers against poachers. They developed a plan based on lessons learned at the Palm Beach Zoo, where animals are taught to voluntarily participate in their own care.
“With so few animals in this part of Africa, it was essential that we save them all,” said Angi Lacinak. “So when they called and said, Thuza is going to lose his eye, a blind rhino is a dead rhino. So no matter what it took, we were going to go there and try.”
The idea was to coax Thuza into a small space with his favorite foods and then desensitize him to humans touching him and splashing water on his face.
“Within a week, we were strategically putting eye drops in his eyes while holding him,” Lacinak said. “And within two weeks, we had transferred that skill set not only to Daniel, who is in charge of leading his guards, but also to the guards.”
The conservation status of southern white rhinos is listed as near threatened, with about 16,000 animals living in the wild. Poaching and habitat loss remain major sources of danger. So while Thuza and other rhinos continue to face challenges in the wild, at least the animal’s eyes have been protected.
This story was translated from English to Spanish with an artificial intelligence tool and was reviewed by an editor before publication.