Rhinos in Botswana

Rhinos in Botswana have been driven to local extinction twice and reintroduced twice, and the population is currently under severe poaching pressure. Khama Rhino Sanctuary near Serowe is the most reliable place for a visitor to see them, while numbers in the Okavango Delta have fallen sharply. Botswana is the only Big Five country where rhino cannot be assumed on a safari, and honest operators say so.

A History of Local Extinction

The story here is not a happy one and setting it out plainly matters.

Both black and white rhino were believed extinct in Botswana by the eighteen nineties, hunted out during the nineteenth century.

A first reintroduction moved 156 southern white rhino from South Africa into Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park across the nineteen sixties and seventies. Cross-border poaching wiped them out.

An aerial survey in the early nineteen nineties found only around 19 to 27 rhino remaining in the wild in the north, with three killed shortly after the count, and black rhino classified as locally extinct.

The decision was taken to round up every remaining wild rhino and move them into fenced areas, to breed numbers up until the security situation allowed release. That is how Khama Rhino Sanctuary and Mokolodi Game Reserve came to exist.

Rhinos in Botswana have been lost twice and brought back twice, which is the context for everything happening now.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary

This is where the recovery started and where a visitor is most likely to see rhino.

Led by the Bangwato paramount chief and other conservationists, the people of Serowe established a community trust to protect the country’s remaining rhinos and give them somewhere to breed.

The first four white rhinos were brought in from Chobe, with eight more from South Africa, and the highly endangered black rhino was reintroduced roughly a decade later. Both species have done well, under the watch of trust staff and the Botswana Defence Force, who patrol the perimeter constantly.

The reserve covers roughly 4,300 hectares of Kalahari sandveld and now holds a substantial white rhino population, serving as a source for reintroductions to Moremi, the Makgadikgadi, the Northern Tuli Game Reserve and elsewhere.

Sightings are unusually reliable, which makes it the most dependable place in Botswana to see rhino.

It sits north of Serowe on the eastern corridor, reachable by ordinary vehicle, and it is a community project rather than a commercial one.

The Return to the Delta

Reintroduction to the wild followed once numbers had recovered, and it was ambitious.

By the end of the nineteen nineties the few remaining wild rhinos in the north were increasing as poaching was contained, and a relocation project moved substantial numbers of white and black rhino from Zimbabwe and South Africa into the Mombo area of Moremi in the Okavango Delta.

The results were encouraging for a time. The first white rhino calf born in Botswana in almost fifteen years arrived after that relocation, and the first black rhino calf followed some years later.

A further programme, run in partnership between private operators, moved rhinos from heavily poached areas of South Africa into Botswana on the reasoning that the country was then considerably safer.

Breeding pairs produced calves, populations expanded and Botswana was held up as a model for restoration.

That has since reversed sharply.

The Poaching Crisis

This is the current situation and there is no way to write about Botswana’s rhinos honestly without it.

For most of the previous decade Botswana recorded almost no rhino poaching at all, with only a couple of animals officially lost across a five-year period. Then it changed abruptly.

Over the following five years the number lost to poaching ran to well over a hundred. At one point 22 rhinos were killed on Chief’s Island in the Delta within nine months, thirteen of them in two months, which sent shockwaves through the conservation world.

The pressure appears to have shifted here as neighbouring countries tightened enforcement, with poaching networks moving to a country that had previously been left alone.

Even fenced areas have proved vulnerable. Poaching incidents have been acknowledged at the Serowe reserve itself, which had been considered among the most secure sites in the country.

Botswana’s response has included dehorning, relocating animals out of the Delta into more defensible areas, and a substantially increased military presence.

Seeing Rhino in Botswana Today

What this means for a visitor is worth being direct about.

Rhino sightings on a standard northern safari are now uncommon and should not be expected. Camps that once advertised Big Five viewing in the Delta are considerably more careful about it than they were.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary near Serowe is the reliable option and is on the eastern corridor rather than the safari circuit, which means a deliberate detour rather than an addition to an Okavango trip.

Mokolodi Nature Reserve south of Gaborone holds white rhino as part of a national breeding programme and is an easy half day from the capital.

The Northern Tuli Game Reserve in the east has received reintroduced animals.

Where rhino do remain in the wild, locations are deliberately not publicised, and guides will not share them. That reticence is appropriate and worth respecting rather than pressing against.

Black and White Rhino

Both species occur in Botswana and telling them apart is straightforward once you know what to look at.

The white rhino is the larger of the two, with a broad square lip adapted for grazing grass close to the ground. The name has nothing to do with colour and is thought to derive from a mistranslation of a word meaning wide, referring to the mouth. They are more social, forming small groups, and more placid.

The black rhino is smaller, with a pointed prehensile upper lip used for browsing leaves and twigs from shrubs. They are solitary, more aggressive and considerably harder to see. Black rhino is critically endangered.

Neither is black or white in colour. Both are grey, and both take on the colour of whatever mud they have been wallowing in.

The lip is the reliable field mark. Head position helps too, since white rhino graze with heads low and black rhino browse with heads up.

Botswana’s population is predominantly southern white rhino, with a smaller and more precarious black rhino population.

One further difference worth knowing on a game drive. White rhino calves run ahead of the mother, while black rhino calves follow behind her. Guides use it as a quick confirmation when the lip is hard to see at distance, and it is the kind of detail that makes a sighting more interesting than a simple identification.

Frequently Asked Questions About Rhinos in Botswana

Booking Your Botswana Trip

The safari companies and tour operators listed on this website put trips like this together for a living and know which camps, guides and routes actually deliver. We are an independent guide to Botswana; we do not book or sell tours ourselves.

When you are ready, arrange your safari, tour or holiday with one of the recognised operators listed here. Tell them your dates and what matters most, and a real person, not a form, will handle the itinerary, park bookings and logistics for you.