Kent safari park carrying out conservation work in attempt to save rhinos

  • Andy Dickenson has been to meet some rhinos at Port Lympne Safari Park

A safari park in Kent is carrying out conservation work in an attempt to save rhinos from going extinct.

Rhino horn is worth more in weight than gold or cocaine, with a single kilogram fetching tens of thousands of pounds on the black market.

Poacher attacks on rhinos have contributed to three species - black, Javan, and Sumatran - becoming critically endangered.

In Hythe, the Aspinall Foundation at Port Lympne Safari Park is home to 14 black rhinos.

As part of their work, they rewild rhinos by releasing them back into their natural habitats in places like South Africa and Tanzania.

So far, eight have been released back into the wild. All of those have since bred, apart from one. The team hope to take three more rhinos to Tanzania in the next year.

Simon Jeffery, from Port Lympne Safari Park, said: "Black rhinos are quite solitary they have a tendency to be very much an in your face kind of rhino.

"They are also one of the rarest, there's probably less than 6,000 of these left in the world."

World Rhino Day is marked yearly on September 22 and hopes to raise awareness about the plight of the rhinoceros species.

Is cutting off rhinos' horns the way to save them from poachers?

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