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Great Plains ConservationRhinos Without Borders • Botswana

The long way home

Ceratotherium simumWhite Rhino · Watercolor study

Field notes / 01

Duba Plains
Okavango Delta
2017–2026

The story after the arrival

Twelve Rhino, one extraordinary arrival. At Duba Plains, the story stretches far beyond the day the animals touched the ground — into the quieter work of protecting them and understanding their habitat needs.

The story of Rhinos Without Borders, the founders it brought to Duba and the work that carries on.

Unfold the journey

Four moments
One long commitment

The Rhinos Without Borders story
Guided Safaris^® Research Lab · Archives

South Africa → Botswana · 2014

A White Rhino grazing in dry golden grass, a watercolor study, beside a map of South Africa

Starting relocation · South Africa

A new beginning, carefully planned

Great Plains Conservation started Rhinos Without Borders in 2014, in partnership with &Beyond, to build new populations away from the poaching pressure in South Africa. The program moved 87 Rhino to Botswana between 2015 and 2018. Twelve were released at Duba Concession.

Every Rhino survived the journey north, the program reports.

For the last leg, the sky

Twelve White Rhino from South Africa flew north in a Botswana Defence Force C-130 to an airstrip in the Delta. From there each one was carried in a special sling beneath a helicopter, hanging by its feet, and revived on ground. The journey from the Rhino’s reserve in South Africa to the new wilderness home at Duba was a unique and highly specialized operation that covered 860 miles between locations as far apart as Chicago, Illinois, and Jacksonville, Florida.

Each Rhino was flown into habitat no vehicle could reach.

Sustaining responsibility

In 2020 the program turned from moving Rhino to monitoring and protecting them, and since 2022 Great Plains has led Rhinos Without Borders, alone. At Duba, the Great Plains Foundation flew a complete aerial survey of the concession in 2024, and in 2025 began a two-year study with the Okavango Research Institute of how the land can sustainably support grazers.

The study pairs remote sensing with mapped vegetation and camera traps through the dry and rainy seasons.

Field notes / 02

The place
between the channels

Duba Plains lies in the northern Okavango Delta, a private reserve where Great Plains Conservation runs its camps. Water from the Delta’s northern channels shapes it: papyrus and reed in the permanent swamp; grass on the seasonal floodplains; jackalberry, sycamore fig and wild date palm on the islands. Every Rhino’s arrival became part of that living system.

Key dates

2013The groundwork: six White Rhino move from South Africa to Botswana
2014Rhinos Without Borders is founded
2015The program’s first Rhino reach Botswana from South Africa
2017Twelve White Rhino from South Africa are flown north and released at Duba Plains
2018The last moves, 87 Rhino brought to Botswana since 2015
2020The program turns from moving Rhino to monitoring and protecting them
2022Great Plains takes over the program, and the Foundation’s first women rangers begin training
2024A complete aerial survey of the Duba Concession
2025A two-year study begins of how the land can sustainably support grazers
2026Monitoring carries on through the Delta’s high floods

Line one · Rhino purchase

$12,500

A new haven

The program purchased Rhino from South Africa to start new populations in the Okavango. This is the story of how they came to Duba.

The aim was to give the species more than one stronghold. With poaching pressure high in South Africa, Great Plains Conservation set out to build new populations of Rhino in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, a new haven where the species could grow far from that pressure.

In 2014 the idea took a name, and between 2015 and 2018 Rhinos Without Borders carried Rhino from South Africa to sites across Botswana, by road and by air.

Duba’s share came in 2017. Each move began with a purchase, $12,500 of the $50,000 the program budgeted for every Rhino it moved. A purchase like this compensates the reserve whose protection built up the population, and in South Africa that return has helped private reserves keep White Rhino on their land and grow their numbers. Donors stood behind the moves. The SwissAfrican Foundation gave $45,000 toward moving a single Rhino that year.

Guided Safaris^® took the Rhino’s story to its private clients, and their fundraiser gave close to $100,000 to the program.

Line two · Capture, quarantine and translocation

$25,000

The last leg, by air

A C-130 to an airstrip in the Delta, then the final stretch beneath a helicopter. Half of every Rhino’s budget went to the journey.

A Botswana Defence Force C-130 carried the Rhino to an airstrip in the Delta. From there each one was slung beneath a helicopter, hanging by its feet, flown into remote habitat no vehicle could reach and revived on the ground.

The science of the sling

The nearest study is a 2021 paper by Radcliffe and colleagues in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases. The team compared wild Black Rhino hanging by the feet from a crane for about 10 minutes with the same animals lying on their side.

Arterial oxygen, hanging: +4 mm Hg
Carbon dioxide, hanging: −3 mm Hg

Breathing held up while the Rhino hung by the feet, and some measures of gas exchange improved slightly.

The moves were followed closely. A 2022 study tracked 72 Rhino, White and Black, released in the Okavango between 2014 and 2018 by several programs, Rhinos Without Borders among them, and every one lived beyond its first year. Two White Rhino were moved a second time, and both then settled.

Line three · Security and monitoring, three years

$12,500

The years of watching over them

A quarter of every Rhino’s budget went to three years of security and monitoring, and the watch has carried on since.

In 2020 the Great Plains Foundation turned from moving Rhino to protecting them, putting its resources into security and monitoring at a time when the poaching pressure was increasing, as the world stood still. Monitoring teams looked after the Rhino day to day, and that year Great Plains camp guides joined the program’s rangers on patrol.

In March 2022, with the agreed three years of monitoring complete, Great Plains took over the program. That June the Great Plains Foundation named its first women unit leaders, the start of a team of women rangers in the Okavango. The Foundation’s rangers now train on EarthRanger, which logs wildlife and incidents in real time.

At Duba, the work turned to the land itself. The Foundation flew a complete aerial survey of the concession in 2024, its images tagged to train machine learning, and in 2025 began a two-year study with the Okavango Research Institute of how the land can sustainably support grazers and how they share its food and space.

The operation on film

Field film / 52 seconds

Translocation footage · Archives

Field notes / 03

The years
that followed

A new generation

Calves were arriving across the program by 2019, and by March 2022 the partners reported that every mature female the program had moved had calved.

Lifted from the flood

In 2021 a mother and calf from the program, cut off on an island by the rising flood, were lifted to safety beneath a Black Hawk helicopter. Great Plains made the rescue with Reclaimed Earth, which helped fund the flight.

Experience carried forward

The teams and skills built through Rhinos Without Borders went on to Great Plains’ rewilding work in Zimbabwe. In March 2026 the Great Plains Foundation helped return Rhino to Kidepo Valley National Park in Uganda.

Field notes / 04

Behind the scenes

A Great Plains Botswana team in green uniforms easing a Rhinos Without Borders crate along the rollers inside a C-130

A veterinary team at work beside a White Rhino lying in the grass, a red cloth over its eyes

A team steadying a White Rhino on its feet, a red cloth over its eyes

A helicopter on a long line over the floodplains of the Okavango, the team waiting on the ground below

A White Rhino grazing on a green floodplain beside a safari vehicle

A White Rhino crossing pale sand under a deep blue sky

Rhinos Without Borders set out to build new Rhino populations in Botswana, away from the poaching pressure in South Africa. Between 2015 and 2018 it moved 87 Rhino by road and by air to sites chosen by Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, and in 2017 a Botswana Defence Force C-130 and a helicopter sling carried some of them to the Duba Concession. Since 2020 the work has been to monitor and protect them, with Great Plains leading the program since 2022.

The next chapter

What the land
sustains

At Duba, the study with the Okavango Research Institute is measuring how the land can sustainably support grazers, season by season. The answers will guide the work for years to come.

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