Zululand Rhino Orphanage

Today the 15^th Dec 2021, marks two years since MPGR has been reintroducing rehabilitated Temmincks Ground Pangolin!

Gomo and Rusty have been living free lives for the last two years. Cory, Xidulu, Willy Thomas, Moria and Tayta have been living free lives for a year or more. Our goal and agreement with the AWPG is to monitor with tags for one year and if after one year the animal is maintaining weight and doing well the monitoring requirements fall away as that animal has been given every chance of successfully rewilding. Gomo was our first pangolin to meet this requirement and we now have another six to add to that list.

Neria arrived on the 6th of November already weighing a stable 8.5Kg. As she was already at a good weight the decision was made to do a brief soft-release of one week before release her onto Manyoni Private Game Reserve. She was release early in December and last weighed in at 9.2 Kg. Neria has been doing very well but has been found to be a very adventures spirit and we have had to collect her on our neighboring property and reset her on the reserve.We are hoping that she will settle down soon and find a permanent burrow to call her own.

Nina arrived on the 29th of November, considering that she is a relatively small pangolin she is doing extremely well and has proven excellent at foraging for food. On hotter days she tends to take a nap under the shade of a tree in the middle of her feeding walk. Nina has also been very good at finding burrows, her progress has been so good that we are hoping she will get to the 6.5 kg mark within the next two week allowing her to roam freely once again.

Stevie arrived at the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Clinic at 10 months old, it is presumed that his mother died of dehydration. Once stable he was release to the ZCT to enter our soft release program and weighed 6.2kgs on his arrive. Unfortunately, because Stevie has mostly been hand raised he will have a long journey back to freedom and will be in the soft release program for several months. Stevie enjoys his daily walks and seems to be foraging well, his most recent weigh in was 5.95 kgs.

We have started putting out camera traps at known burrows which we hope to use as a non-invasive method of monitoring pangolins once their tags have been removed. in these pictures Cory can be seen coming out of and going back into one of her burrows.