Nakuru National Park (188 Sq Kms) is best known as the home of flamingoes, but this beautiful Kenyan park is also a rhino sanctuary. Up until the translocation it was not easy to see a rhino here, but with the efforts of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the financial aid of the Kenya Rhino Rescue the introduction of more rhinos has been a real success.

The project first started in early 1983 by establishing Nakuru National Park as a rhino sanctuary. The idea was to capture threatened rhinos and transfer them where they would be given 24-hour protection. A further important reason for translocation is to facilitate the exchange of genetic characteristics and to prevent inbreeding.

The park has a 74 kilometre long electric fence, and a rhino headquarters at Naishi in the south of the park to give full protection to the rhinos. Two adult indigenous black rhinos (Diceros bicornis), a pair which have never bred, were known to exist in the park at the time of installing the fence.

'Stocking' of black rhinos commenced in 1987 from Solio Game Reserve and Nairobi National Park. The Park may also come to be identified as a breeding area for white rhinos - a pair were introduced from Solio in 1990-91 and the female gave birth in March 1993. Further translocations of white and black rhinos were undertaken and today the population totals 54.

The number of white rhinos increased in September 1994 from 8 to 18 as a result of a donation by the Natal Parks Board of South Africa. This donation is the most recent of approximately 3,800 white rhinos translocated to reserves and zoos throughout the world since the early 1960s. The Natal Parks Board gave 20 white rhinos altogether to Kenya. The other 10 were given to 'Ol Choro Ouirua' in the Maasai Mara. The rhinos were transported by air from South Africa to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, and on to Nakuru and the Maasai Mara by road. Mr Tim Oloo, the Rhino Programme Coordinator, organised the transportation and the construction of the holding bomas (Swahili for homestead).

The 20 rhinos had been captured in June 1994. The ground capture team had to catch each animal as quickly as possible and were guided in by a helicopter which was also used for darting the rhinos. The cocktail drug of narcotic and tranquillizer took about five minutes to become effective, then the rhinos were given a quick check-up and an antibiotic to prevent any infection before being loaded onto a truck and carried to the bomas. They stayed in the South African bomas for a few months.

On 25 September 1994 10 rhinos were sent to Nairobi. Five went to the Maasai Mara Reserve and the other 5 were taken to Nakuru National Park and released into their holding bomas the same day. Another 10 followed a week later.

In Nakuru the rhinos were held in their pens for an acclimatisation period of two weeks. One of the rhinos arrived without her front horn, it had broken inside the bomas in South Africa. This same female really suffered on her trip. "She gave birth to a premature male calf which died after only one hour", said Mr Josiah Mwangi, the KWS officer in charge of rhino surveillance in Lake Nakuru National Park.