In conjunction with Round River Conservation Studies and Save the Rhino Trust

The Kunene region of northwestern Namibia is home to the largest remaining free-ranging population of black rhino, Diceros bicornis bicornis, in the world. Namibian black rhino range covers 20,000 km2, primarily in the Kunene region but also including a portion of the Erongo region (Hearn 2000). Poaching in the 1980’s pushed the species to near extinction but conservation efforts in Namibia have helped the population to rebound. Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) was founded in 1982 and has played a crucial role, along with other NGOs and the Ministry for Environment and Tourism (MET), in rhino recovery in Namibia both through field research and wildlife monitoring (Hearn 2003). SRT is a non-profit, non-government organization that works with local communities to advance black rhino conservation. This approach has proven successful, as rhino population numbers have more than doubled since conservation efforts began and there are now 142 individuals (Hearn 2003). SRT integrates rhino conservation with benefits to the local communities in an effort to give those who live within the black rhino area a vested interest in its survival. The Kunene region is entirely communal land, thus it is imperative that conservation be done on a community level. Because the rhino habitat is on public, not private land the public must embrace and support conservation efforts for them to succeed. A large section of the habitat area also falls under the Palmwag tourism concession and 67% of the rhinos occur in this concession (Hearn 2004). This area has a greater protected status than the other communal lands; however, it is still open to human use in the form of restricted tourism. Other rhino habitat areas outside of the Palmwag concession are open to a variety of land use such as hunting, farming, less-regulated tourism, mining, and any other public uses.

The Kunene region is known for its remarkable scenery and high levels of wildlife and the region has developed into a tourism destination. Because of their global rarity, black rhinos are one of the main tourist attractions in Kunene (Uri-khob 2004). The communities in the region are predominantly low-income and tourism is looked to as a way to supplement or provide earnings. SRT has been working to develop black rhino-based tourism as a method for funding rhino conservation in the area and to further community interest in conservation. One of the incentives for rhino conservation for local communities is the revenue generated by tourists who come to the area to view black rhino. This type of tourism is known as “ecotourism.” Ecotourism is defined by the IUCN as “environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature that promotes conservation, has low visitor impact, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local populations” (Ceballos-Lascuráin 1996, pg. 20). A potential negative impact of ecotourism is that increased use corrupts fragile natural systems. These include habitat degradation from off-road driving and displacement of animal species (Ceballos-Lascuráin 1996).

The objectives for our study are to determine how levels of rhino displacement
disturbance are correlated to tourist viewing and environmental characteristics. These
relationships will lead to the development of suggested guidelines for future rhino
viewing in the Kunene region. These guidelines are designed to minimize rhino
disturbance while still encouraging ecotourism. We hypothesize that ecotourism and
rhino conservation can be complementary in the Kunene region.

—Except taken from a field paper by Nkabeng Maruping and Hilary Eisen