Black rhinocerous - Diceros bicornis michaeli

Shoulder height 1.6 meters
Mass 900 to 1,000 kilograms
Gestation 16 months, single calf
Speed 45 km/h maximum
Diet Browser and grazer, preferring long grass. Usually found in thickets, where it eats shrubs, twigs, and leaves. Thorns present no problem.
Feces Usually defecates in piles along various routes. Dung is scattered with the hind legs and is easily identified by its fibrous, woody texture.
Spoor More compact and smaller than that of the white rhino. Urinates backwards against vegetation and then kicks back, often breaking up the vegetation. This action is a form of communicating and is also sexually related. The female will ”spray-kick“ when in season and the male will do it more frequently when consorting a female.

The hook-lipped, or black, rhino has a distinctive prehensile lip. It holds its head higher and is smaller than the wide-lipped, or white, rhino. An agile animal, the black rhino can display considerable aggression, although it is usually shy and solitary. Its eyesight is poor, but it has a good sense of smell and possesses extraordinary hearing. The tail is held erect while running. The black rhino has a wide vocal range and can possibly communicate like an elephant below the range of human hearing. Breathing is an important part of communication. Unlike the white rhino-calf, the black rhino calf normally runs behind its mother.

Although there were an estimated 20,000 black rhino in Kenya in the 1970s, by 1982 the population was reduced to fewer than 400. Since then, their number has increased and now stands at over 420. The number in fenced areas has risen at an average rate of four percent each year when the conditions are good.

The main cause of decline was, and still remains, poaching for horn. Poaching is generally carried out by heavily armed bandits or shifta and is aided by internal corruption. Furthermore, the unchecked spread of human development into areas that were formerly wilderness has resulted in a loss of habitat for an animal that has been remarkably successful for 40 million years.

Since 1984 the Kenyan government has pursued an active program devoted to the recovery of Kenya’s black rhino, with efforts centering on the development of specially protected or fenced sanctuaries on government and private land, such as Lewa. With the continued poaching of rhino in a number of communal areas and state parks, private rhino sanctuaries have proved invaluable.

Rhino populations under custodianship both on private land (Solio Ranch) and in some state-run areas (such as Nairobi National Park) have provided animals to set up new populations (including reintroducing animals into an electrified-fence sanctuary inside the KWS-run Tsavo West and Meru National Parks). The private sector thus plays an important part in the conservation of rhino in Kenya and currently supplies many of the animals being used to restock state parks.

Kenya is currently the stronghold of the Eastern African subspecies Diceros bicornis michaeli, being home to about 88 % of the population in 1995. Like South Africa and Namibia, Kenya is using translocation to set up new populations while aiming to ensure that donor populations remain productive. The public plight of the black rhino has attracted support from many different areas. Today, scientists are formulating a method of «fingerprinting» rhino horn based on the nutrient content of each specific rhino conservation area. This will enable them to pinpoint the area a rhino came from, its family group, and even its preferred diet. It is also an important step toward eradicating poaching, as scientists will be able to determine where a rhino was when it was killed.