The Black Rhinoceros is brought back to Ruanda

Abstract

Thanks to the protection afforded it by the Belgian Government, the northern race of the white, or square-lipped rhinoceros, Ceratotherium simum cottoni, is increasing in the Garamba National Park of the Belgian Congo. This park was specially created in 1938 to preserve the species, whose numbers there were down to about a hundred individuals. They now probably approach 1,000. But the story of the black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis, is very different. Once common in the savannahs of Katanga, but now exterminated there, it used also to exist in the east of Ruanda, notably in what is now the Kagera National Park. So, in 1958, bearing in mind its success with the white rhinoceros, the National Parks of the Belgian Congo decided to try to reintroduce the black rhinoceros into Kagera. This rhinoceros is still not rare in some parts of Tanganyika Territory, especially in Karagwe district, but that country is separated from the Kagera Park in Ruanda by the River Kagera itself.