Ol Pejeta

In 1970, Kenya had about 20,000 Black Rhino. By 1990, fewer than 400 were left, by the figures in a 2007 Kenya Wildlife Service review.

The government’s answer, starting in 1984, was to concentrate protection in smaller, fenced sanctuaries. Sweetwaters was one of them, along with Lake Nakuru National Park, Ngulia and the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary at Lewa.

Between 1989 and 1993 Sweetwaters took in 20 Black Rhino, most of them from Solio, the rest from Nairobi National Park and Lewa.

In 2004 Fauna & Flora International stepped in, with a significant investment from Jon Stryker, and Ol Pejeta Conservancy began. The conservancy marked its 20th anniversary in 2024 and 2025.

Out-of-season rain held things up until February 3, 2007. When the work was over, 28 Black Rhino had arrived: 24 from Solio, among them a young calf named Richard traveling with his mother, Upendo, and four from Ol Jogi.

Swara, the East African Wild Life Society’s magazine, called the operation East Africa’s largest ever Rhino translocation.

Felix Patton’s team followed the newcomers closely. Nearly all of them settled into home ranges within six months, most of those within 25 days, and no fights between Rhino were reported.

The run began in 2018, a year Ol Pejeta’s annual report recorded with no poaching incidents at all, and the reports have carried it forward since. An annual independent audit checks the Rhino population, the conservancy’s 2016 report says.

By 2013, its chief executive has said, Ol Pejeta had earned Key 1 population status from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a top rating for a Rhino population.

Ol Pejeta puts the cost at more than US$ 10,000 each year to protect a single Black Rhino on the conservancy.

The Northern White Rhino, Ceratotherium simum cottoni, is a subspecies of White Rhino, distinct from the Southern White. Its historical range covered Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

Crating began early on Saturday, December 19, 2009, at Dvůr Králové Zoo. Trucks fitted with heaters took Sudan, Suni, Najin and Fatu to a cargo flight that left at 6 p.m. and landed in Nairobi early the next morning, and more trucks carried them on to Ol Pejeta. The convoy reached the conservancy after 26 hours. Ol Pejeta’s Southern White, the conservancy says, helped the newcomers settle into African life.

Sudan, the last male, died on March 19, 2018, when his veterinary team let him go after age and a string of infections had left him unable to stand.

Najin and Fatu can’t carry a pregnancy, so the next chapter belongs to the laboratory.

BioRescue is an international research consortium led by Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research. The work is spread across many institutions: care, protection and field access from Ol Pejeta, the Kenya Wildlife Service and Kenyan caregivers and vets; maturing and fertilizing the eggs at Avantea, a laboratory in Cremona, Italy; risk assessments at the University of Padua.

Vets collect eggs from a living female in a procedure called ovum pick-up. In the lab, the eggs are matured and then fertilized by injecting a single sperm into each egg. Some develop into blastocysts, early-stage embryos that can be frozen for later transfer.

In October 2021 BioRescue stopped collecting eggs from Najin after an in-depth risk assessment at the University of Padua. She stayed on as a companion to Fatu and, in the consortium’s word, an ambassador for her kind.

In September 2023 the team transferred two Southern White embryos into a Southern White female, Curra, who conceived: the world’s first successful embryo transfer in Rhino, the consortium announced. Floods that November brought an infection that took her before she could give birth, and her postmortem confirmed the pregnancy.

Human IVF took more than 100 attempts to succeed, the consortium reminded its readers in 2026. The Northern White program has made six.

Each move is years in the making. Conservancies prepare the land and the protection, the Kenya Wildlife Service leads the operation, and the animals chosen are typically subadults of 5 to 7 years, ready to make a new home.

In January 2024 six of Ol Pejeta’s Black Rhino joined others from Nairobi National Park and Lewa to found the new population at Loisaba Conservancy. In May 2025 nine more went to Segera, where Black Rhino came home after some 60 years.

One young female met a territorial male Lion within hours of her release. She recovered fully, and in March 2026, Loisaba reports, she gave birth to a healthy male calf, her first.

Morani was orphaned when his mother was killed, and he came to be seen as the conservancy’s first Rhino ambassador.

Baraka lost his right eye in 2008 in a fight with another Rhino, and cataracts later took the sight in his other eye. Ranger Esogon Ekale spent many days helping him settle into a 100-acre enclosure, the same one that had once been Morani’s. Baraka could no longer find and choose food well on his own, so his care reached into every meal.

Baraka died on the morning of Sunday, August 16, 2026, at 31, on the conservancy where he was born.