Les Carlisle: Group Conservation Manager

An incredible day of rhino capture, part 2

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Here is my long-promised description of the remainder of our day of animal capture at &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in the Rhinos Without Borders project. After the first rhino was offloaded in the boma we moved to the north of the reserve to catch the next animal. We were now old hands at it, so the operation was incredibly slick and, by sunset, we had caught the full quota of six animals. This was really unusual and almost too good to be true! A bird’s eye view of the rhino being walked to the transport crate The transport crate being loaded onto the truck by crane The team with their sixth rhino for the day just before sunset Hardly daring to believe our luck, we all drove off into the sunset to have a drink and digest the incredible experiences of the day. We all had the almost surreal feeling that we had just been watching an emotive movie but, in fact, we had really been there. The last rhino was being taken back to the boma and, as we has already witnessed the previous animals being offloaded and it would be too dark to film this one, we asked the guests what they wanted to do. All agreed to head for the lodge and a shower before supper. But, as we were about to...