The Big 5: Rhino

Fastly becoming extinct, the rhinoceros is on par with lions for people’s favourites of the Big 5 hard to hunt animals. Sadly, the best places for viewing these endangered animals that could well be extinct in as little as 5-10 years if poaching for the ivory trade is not thwarted in the next few years is in conservation parks and sanctuaries. Undoubtedly the best of these has to be at Ol Pejeta in Kenya; It is the largest black rhino sanctuary in East Africa and thus is home to a great number of free-roaming black rhinos. But the icing on the cake here is that it is home to four of the last seven northern white rhinos in addition to Barake; a blind black rhino saved from poachers by the conservancy. A rather sobering fact to say the least. The black rhino is the most solitary and thus hard to spot compared to its white rhino cousin. So Ol Pejeta is probably the best place in Africa to have a chance of viewing these beautiful and hard to hunt animals – the second-largest land mammal in the world – before they could become extinct.