The Moditlo Private Game Reserve is home to about 40 rhinos, and due to successul breeding the numbers have been growing nicely over recent years.

Pierre, our ranger, was able to spot this beautiful specimen near the Vuyani Safari Lodge with our guests yesterday, and took a photo of it.

The conservancy is about to introduce black rhinos as well, and soon about 30-40 of them will freely roam through the safari reserve. This is truly exciting, as the black rhino is even more endangered than the white rhino. Only a few thousand species are left of this specimen in the world, so it is a massive privilege for us, and our guests, to have them here and to see them regularly in the future.

By the way, black and white rhinos are all “grey”-colored. The term “white” was given to the one species as English settlers thought “wit” (in Dutch) meant white, but it meant “wide”. Indeed the white rhino has wide lips (as opposed to the black rhino, which has pointy lips), as it is a grazer. The black rhino eats leaves off bush and trees, so hence the pointier lips.

But color-wise, they are identical!

Sadly, and we are all aware of this, the rhino is being pushed to the brink of extinction because of poaching for its horn, so we dehorn our rhinos regularly to protect them. The photo below shows the effect of dehorning. This one is close to being dehorned very soon again.

It is sad it has to be done, but this is the best for the protection of these rare animals, and considered best practice in South Africa now.

Our security activities have been beefed up as well, so hopefully poaching incidents will become even rarer in the near future.

Message to the Chinese consumer: horn is biologically identical to finger nails, and it has absolutely NO positive effects on health whatsoever. So if you must, please bite your own finger nails. Same thing. But leave the rhino alone!

Message to poachers: no need to come here, our rhinos are all dehorned anyway!