Conservationists have an ambitious plan to bring endangered white rhinoceros back to a country in which they were driven to extinction
A cargo plane, from South Africa, slows to a halt on a dusty airstrip in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Eight huge boxes, weighing a ton apiece, slide out and are loaded on to trucks. Inside each is one of the arrivals who will start new lives in the DRC – eight white rhinoceros.
The trucks drive three hours through the jungle to bring these megafauna to Garamba National Park, and the crates are unloaded into a small enclosure. One by one, their gates fly up and the rhinos lumber out.
One male, perhaps a little ambivalent about his new nationality, stays put in his crate. The temptation of a hat waving on an outstretched arm is not enough to beckon him out, so a conservationist hangs down and pushes his enormous bulk out from behind. At last, they have arrived in their new home.
Rhinoceros footprints were last seen in the DRC back in 2006. It was a tumultuous year for the country, the second largest in Africa: the first fractious elections since the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had taken place under the nervous gaze of the international community.