Eight critically endangered black rhinoceroses died after being moved from parks near Kenya's capital to a sanctuary in a national park in the country's southeast, the government said Friday.
Preliminary investigations suggest the rhinos suffered from salt poisoning as they adapted to water with higher saline levels than they were accustomed to, according to tourism and wildlife minister Najib Balala. In a statement, he called the death toll "unprecedented" in more than a dozen years of translocations in Kenya.
The eight dead rhinos were among 11 that were moved last month to Tsavo East National Park, where wildlife officials hoped they would start a new population. An additional three animals were to join them soon, but Balala said he had immediately suspended the transfer operations.
As African wildlife numbers have plummeted because of poaching and habitat loss, conservationists and governments have increasingly turned to translocations in hopes of restoring populations in remote spots where they might be better shielded from the threats driving them to the brink elsewhere. One nonprofit, African Parks, has shipped several endangered species across the continent, including black rhinos, which it has flown from South Africa to Rwanda and Chad. Kenya moved 149 rhinos between 2005 and 2017, Balala's statement said. Eight of those died, not including the black rhinos at Tsavo East.
Translocation is a bold, quixotic, expensive and logistically complicated approach to saving wildlife. And as the situation in Kenya underscored, it is dangerous.
