An East African black rhino, born and raised in San Diego, is adjusting to a new home in Tanzania. San Diego Zoo Global donated Eric to conservationists hoping to reintroduce the threatened species in the Serengeti. KPBS Environment Reporter Erik Anderson recently spoke with the Singita Grumeti Fund’s Grant Burden. He’s one of the people guiding the effort to bring the East African black rhino back to Tanzania. Burden is also monitoring how Eric’s transition is going.
Q: How is Eric doing now that he has been in Africa for a couple of months?
A: Within about a week to 10 days after his arrival, he was back to normal, normal being comfortable to what he was like in the Zoo. And he’s maintained that right through. So we have been, all in all, extremely happy with his ability to have handled the translocation and make the transition.
Q: Has he had a chance to interact with any of the other animals that are in that location, that pen where you're keeping him?
A: By the end of December, mid to end of December, we hope to release Eric out of that four-hectare paddock, into the 235-hectare area. Which currently houses another black rhino cow of about 17 years of age. We’ve documented, with the use of track cameras, their interactions where she’s come right up against the (paddock) fence and they’ve almost touched each other. You know, horn to horn through the logs. All very civil for the most part. And it’s gone really, really well — their introductions.
Q: Has there been anything that surprised you about Eric?
A: Well, yeah. I think the one thing that goes just as you get individual human beings you get individual rhinos. And I think his temperament is such that he’s actually well suited for having undertaken this translocation from America through to Tanzania.
Q: Are you worried about his interactions with larger animals, like elephants?
A: An animal of 1,600 kilos is not wantonly going to go after a 6-ton elephant bull. And that’s pretty much the only animal that would really be able to cause the lethal harm to a rhino. Anything smaller, a buffalo and a hippo, and a rhino will be able to hold his own and there is very, very little possibility of the sorts of altercations or meetings in the bush turning to anything more serious than a bit of display.
Q: And how long before he gets access to a larger area of the park?
A: Eric’s move from San Diego was almost a proof of concept of phase one of a larger project — rhino project — that the Grumeti Fund is working with, in conjunction with the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. And in 2019, by June or July, we hope to have another 12 more rhinos, East African black rhinos, that are currently in an out-of-range situation in South Africa. The bigger picture then is that by mid-2019 both Eric, the bull, and Laikipia, the cow, will actually form part of the release of a group of 12 animals — 14 in total. It could be anything in this next six to 12 months Eric could possibly be a free-ranging black rhino contributing to the black rhino reproduction and breeding in the greater Serengeti ecosystem. There’s no barrier between the Grumeti concessions and the Serengeti National Park, which is core area of the Serengeti ecosystem. So Eric’s genetic material, having come from East Africa, you know his lineage emanating from East Africa in the late 1970s and being brought back to Serengeti now is really, really valuable.
