KAMPALA: For the first time in more than 40 years, rhinos are back in Uganda’s Kidepo Valley National Park after poachers there slaughtered them all for their prized horns and meat.

Two southern white rhinos rumbled out of transport crates on Tuesday after a long journey from a private ranch, becoming the first of eight animals set to repopulate the park where the last rhino was killed in 1983.

Back then, poachers exploiting political instability in Uganda killed all the rhinos roaming Kidepo and the country’s other national parks, once home to around 700 of the giant mammals.

Their disappearance marked the species’ total extinction in the wild in Uganda. Their reintroduction is now being overseen partly by the state-run Uganda Wildlife Authority.

“This moment marks the beginning of a new rhino story for Kidepo Valley National Park,” James Musinguzi, Executive Director UWA, said at a ceremony to mark the occasion. “Translocation of these rhinos is the first step in restoring a species that once formed part of the park’s natural heritage,” he added.

The two rhinos were translocated to Kidepo, a vast expanse of savannah in remote northeastern Uganda, from the privately owned Ziwa Rhino and Wildlife Ranch in Nakasongola, about 100 km (62 miles) north of the capital Kampala.

The ranch has been breeding rhinos since 2005, when it imported four southern white rhinos from a Kenyan game reserve. Poaching remains a major problem in Uganda’s protected wildlife areas and authorities regularly detain and prosecute suspects caught with ivory, pangolins and other endangered species, according to conservationists.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2026