- “It is with utmost regret that I inform you that Krisztián Gyöngyi was killed this morning by a rhinoceros in Akagera National Park in Rwanda while out tracking animals in the park,” Peter Fearnhead, CEO of the non-profit conservation organization African Parks, announced in a statement.
- According to Fearnhead, Gyöngyi was a rhino specialist who had more than five years of experience monitoring and conserving rhinos in Majete Wildlife Reserve and Liwonde National Park, both in Malawi.
- In a joint initiative of the Rwandan government and African Parks, which employs more than 600 rangers and manages 10 national parks and protected areas in seven countries, 18 Eastern black rhinos were airlifted from South Africa to Akagera National Park.
Anti-poaching efforts in Africa are inherently dangerous, especially given the increasing militarization of the poaching gangs that are decimating elephant and rhino numbers across the continent. But recent news out of Rwanda is a grim reminder of another kind of risk anyone working with wildlife is taking, even if their aim is to protect those animals.
Hungarian wildlife ecologist Krisztián Gyöngyi was killed on June 7 in Rwanda’s Akagera National Park by an Eastern black rhino he had helped translocate from South Africa just a month earlier.
“It is with utmost regret that I inform you that Krisztián Gyöngyi was killed this morning by a rhinoceros in Akagera National Park in Rwanda while out tracking animals in the park,” Peter Fearnhead, CEO of the non-profit conservation organization African Parks, announced in a statement. “Kris was instrumental in supporting the reintroduction efforts of the black rhino into [Akagera National Park], and was on the ground training rangers how to track and protect them.”
According to Fearnhead, Gyöngyi was a rhino specialist who had more than five years of experience monitoring and conserving rhinos in Majete Wildlife Reserve and Liwonde National Park, both in Malawi. “His Master’s degree was on habitat capacity on the black rhinoceros in Majete, and he had been carrying out his PhD research on the conservation ecology of the black rhinoceros in Liwonde National Park since 2012,” Fearnhead said. “He leaves behind his wife Orsi and his young daughter.”
We have no words to describe how devastated we are at losing Krisz. All our thoughts are with his wife and daughter https://t.co/4Gu1ljMwZy
— Akagera (@AkageraPark) June 9, 2017
In a joint initiative of the Rwandan government and African Parks, which employs more than 600 rangers and manages 10 national parks and protected areas in seven countries, 10 female and eight male Eastern black rhinos were airlifted from South Africa to Akagera National Park last month. The translocated rhinos included a mother and her 18-month-old calf.
The Eastern black rhino is a subspecies of the critically endangered black rhinoceros or hook-lipped rhinoceros.
Prior to their reintroduction in May, black rhinos had not been seen in Akagera National Park since 2007. The park was home to a population of more than 50 Eastern black rhinos as recently as the 1970s, but they were wiped out there by poachers over the ensuing decades.
Demand for rhino horn in Southeast Asia, where it is used in traditional medicine despite having no scientifically proven health benefits, is driving a poaching crisis that has killed at least 5,940 African rhinos since 2008, according to the IUCN. Some 1,338 rhinos were killed by poachers across Africa in 2015 alone, the sixth consecutive year in which the number of poached rhinos increased.
“With only some 5,250 black rhinos remaining in the wild, every individual matters, but there’s particular concern over the Eastern black rhino subspecies, of which fewer than 900 are left,” Laurel Neme reported for National Geographic.
“New areas are also needed because the remaining Eastern black rhinos are highly — and dangerously — concentrated, with 75 percent of them in Kenya. The rest are in Tanzania, and there’s a small breeding group on a ranch in South Africa. Such concentration means that intense poaching or disease could kill off a major part of the whole population.”
Few details of the circumstances that led to Gyöngyi’s death have been released publicly. “While his family has been informed, details of the incident are still being gathered,” African Parks’ Fearnhead said. “This is a tremendous loss for all of us, especially for rhino conservation efforts in Africa.”
Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter: @mikeg2001
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