William: My joy at muddy little marvel
Prince tells MoS of delight at birth of baby rhinos to mums he waved off into the wild
WITH his ears flapping and tail twitching, baby rhino Mobo scampers towards a watering hole in the shadow of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro.
The little black rhino’s birth in the wild would be cause for celebration under any circumstances. But Mobo’s story is all the more remarkable as he is the result of a unexpectedly successful mission backed by Prince William that introduced three black rhinos to their natural habitat from the wildlife park in Kent where they were born.
And yesterday the Duke of Cambridge spoke of his delight that the two females sent out had become mothers.
Talking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, he said: ‘It’s great to hear the news. The past few years have been a dark time for African rhinos. This success story reminds us what can be achieved by committed conservationists even in the face of considerable challenge.
‘It is incredibly difficult to get rhinos that have previously been in captivity to breed in the wild, so huge congratulations to the team that made this happen.’
William waved off the two females and a male from Damian Aspinall’s Port Lympne wildlife park in 2012.
Mobo’s mother, Grumeti, was one of the females and gave birth to him in April. The other female, Zawadi, has also had a so-far-unnamed calf, having given birth two months later, in June.
Film of the baby rhinos with their mothers has just been released and can be viewed at Mail Online.
The father of both calves is a rhino named Jamie, who was also born in captivity, in a zoo in the Czech Republic, and was relocated to Tanzania in 2009.
Weighing about 80 lb (the average of an 11-year-old child), the calves were born naturally without human intervention.
Mr Aspinall, whose Aspinall Foundation oversaw the journey of the rhinos from his 625-acre wildlife park to their African habitat, said: ‘When you release animals into the wild, it’s very emotional. They give you a look, like they are trying to thank you. For these rhinos to have given birth naturally in the wild is everything we could hope for. This is something we as a country should be very proud of – no one else in the world is approaching conservation the way Britain is.’
More than 1,300 rhinos were killed by poachers in Africa last year, the highest number in a decade. They are coveted for their horns, used in Chinese medicine.
There are now just 5,000 black rhinos left on the planet, a catastrophic decline from 70,000 in 1970.
Prince William, president of the charity Tusk Trust, has warned: ‘If current trends continue, there will be no African elephants or rhinos left in the wild by the time my daughter Charlotte [who is a year old] reaches her 25th birthday.’