ln South Africa’s Northern Cape, nestled between the Great Karoo and the Kalahari, lies  Rockwood Conservation – a reserve situated on 33 000 pristine acres (13 355 ha) of arid to semi-arid desert and bushveld.

Rockwood is precisely the kind of habitat where rhinos would have roamed for millennia before they became a target for unscrupulous poachers who decimated their numbers. After a brutal killing, these poachers supply rhino horn to black-market buyers who mistakenly believe rhino horn, often regarded as a status symbol, hold medicinal value or possess healing properties.

On average, one wild rhino is killed in South Africa every day. Except at Rockwood Conservation. For more than five years, Rockwood has not had a single poaching incident. Rockwood Conservation came about as a result of the vision of one man, Wicus Diedericks, who in 2013 transformed Rockwood from a cattle and sheep farm into a conservation reserve. Today, Rockwood Conservation is dedicated to the protection of wild rhinos and other endemic species.

Setting it apart from other rhino conservation projects, Rockwood takes an aggressive stance on rhino conservation. In part, this approach necessitated the installation of a state-of-the-art security system, put in place to keep our rhinos as safe from poachers as possible.

While living under 24-hour security surveillance is not how these gentle beasts would typically live in the wild, it is our best bet in keeping them safe from their biggest threats: expanding human settlement and agriculture, unchecked illegal poaching – and human apathy.

Today, Rockwood is home to over 300 Southern White Rhinos. We are proud to have celebrated more than 130 rhino births to date, making us one of the world’s largest and most successful private rhino conservation projects.

Conservation Highlights:

1. Rhino conservation
2. Rhino milk nutrition research (in collaboration with third parties)
3. Rhino nursery, where we hand-raise rhino orphans and babies who wouldn’t otherwise survive in the wild
4. Volunteer programmes and projects

Future Aims:

1. Not having to save the rhino
2. Sustainable volunteering
3. Donations in order to sustain our work

Note: This member has not provided any accurate location information, for security reasons.

Images provided.