Kenya vows to step up measures to boost rhinoceros conservation

NAIROBI, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) — Kenya on Sunday joined the rest of the international community in marking World Rhino Day by committing to intensifying measures to save the black rhino population in the country.
Rebecca Miano, the cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, said the government has adopted novel technologies such as the use of drones and forensic evidence to up the ante in rhino conservation.
“Besides, we have allocated resources to support the recruitment of additional law enforcement officers. This will contribute significantly to our efforts to save the remaining rhino populations and other wildlife for posterity,” Miano said during the celebrations in Samburu County, northern Kenya.
The official lauded the continued co-existence of humans and wildlife in private and community-owned spaces, which she said gives hope that Kenya will continue leading from the front in wildlife conservation, including offering invulnerable sanctums for rare animal species such as the rhino.
“I assure the global community that Kenya will continue to play her rightful role in wildlife conservation while laying special emphasis on rhino range expansion and conservation,” Miano said.
Kenya is an important rhino habitat, hosting 80 percent of the eastern black rhino subspecies found in eight realms nationally, according to Miano.
She said the government has developed laws and policies that favor its quest to secure wildlife resources for current and future generations, including domesticating multilateral environmental agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Miano said the implementation of the past six editions of the rhino recovery action plan and the seventh edition currently underway has enhanced the regeneration of the black rhino populations by more than 100 percent.
The number of rhinos in the country has increased from less than 400 in 1989 to 1,890 in 2022, with 966 being black, 922 white and two northern whites.
“There is likelihood that Kenya’s rhino population will exceed the numbers in 2022 once the ongoing national wildlife census is concluded,” Miano said, adding that Kenya’s black rhino population is ranked third largest globally after South Africa and Namibia.
She said the East African nation hosts the world’s only remaining female northern white rhino following the death of “Sudan” in 2018, whose stuffed figurine is quartered at the Nairobi National Museums as an enduring relic of an iconic freak of nature in Kenya’s wide-ranging stock of wildlife species.
The Kenyan official said the Wildlife Research and Training Institute, together with other researchers around the world, is working to bring the northern white rhino back from extinction. ■