Watch: South Africa wildlife sanctuary welcomes white rhino calf

A wildlife sanctuary in Barberton, South Africa, welcomed a new white rhino calf on August 11.

Footage recorded by the Care for Wild rhino sanctuary shows nine-year-old Olive the white rhino with her male calf shortly after it was born. The calf can be seen taking its first steps and nursing with its mother.

Care for Wild said that Olive was rescued at 10 months old after poachers killed her mother.

Care for Wild is the largest orphan rhino sanctuary in the world. They rescue, rehabilitate, rewild, release and protect rhinos.

South Africa was fast becoming the centre of the rhino poaching crisis. Rhinos were being brutally poached daily in National Parks, Provincial Parks and on private property to meet the demand for medicines made from rhino horn.

The illegal rhino horn trade catapulted the status of the White Rhino to ‘Near Threatened’ and the Black Rhino to ‘Critically Endangered’.

Many of these devastating poaching incidents left behind young, defenseless, orphaned calves. As the effects of the escalating poaching crisis became evident, so too did the need for a highly specialised care facility that could support the conservation efforts to save this iconic, key stone species from extinction.

Founded by Petronel Nieuwoudt, Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary holds an official MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) with South African National Parks in a joint effort to safeguard the future of the species and South Africa’s heritage.

The white rhino is classed as “near threatened”, with about 18 000 animals living in protected areas and private game reserves.

Now read: Poaching, horn trade declines but rhinos still in danger