JOHANNESBURG: Two of six critically endangered black rhinos have died of unknown causes five months after being flown from South Africa to Chad in a pioneering project to re-introduce the animals, officials said on Sunday.

Rhinos in Chad were wiped out by poaching nearly 50 years ago, and the six rhinos were intended to establish a new population in the country after intensive anti-poaching measures were put in place to protect them.

“We can confirm that these two rhinos [a male and a female] were not poached,” the South African environment department and Chad government said in a joint statement. “However, the exact cause of death is not yet known.”

In July, there was widespread outrage and a bitter row over responsibility when 11 black rhinos in Kenya died after being transferred to a new sanctuary, mainly due to toxic levels of salt in borehole drinking water.

The rhinos in Chad had been roaming free in Zakouma National Park since late August after a gradual acclimatisation process that saw them first released into small enclosures.

The surviving four rhinos are being closely monitored, the statement said, adding that a specialist veterinarian had travelled to the park to conduct postmortems. It said the cause of death would be announced as soon as possible.

The high-profile transfer, which took two years of planning, was hailed as major conservation breakthrough, with translocation organiser African Parks describing it as a “truly hopeful story”.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2018