BY CLAUDIA FLISI
Anna Merz, the Rhino Lady, doesn’t live
on a 61,000 acre rhinoceros sanctuary in
Kenya anymore. Her home today adjoins an
88,000 acre game reserve in South Africa,
which has its own resident rhinos. After all,
the woman who devoted much of her life to
Africa’s threatened rhino population shouldn’t
be far from the creatures she literally saved
from extinction.
Merz is in her early 80s, short white hair,
wiry and fit, a firm gaze and handshake.
She lives alone with her nine dogs on a
compound in the Lapalala Private Game Reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo Province.
She calls her compound Samia, in honor of the rhinoceros immortalized in her best-
known book, Rhino at the Brink of Extinction. Her three horses are cared for on another
estate not far away, and she goes riding several times a week. She rarely walks or rides
in the bush without her gun and knife. She isn’t afraid of stray rhinos, but buffalo,
baboons, warthogs and puff adders all present challenges to interlopers. Her favorite
horse, Grizelda, a purebred Boerperd, had been bitten by a puff adder on the muzzle a
few years ago and almost died. (The muzzle swells and the horse risks death by
asphyxiation).
However, the most dangerous predator in the African bush is man himself. Merz learned
this soon after moving to Kenya some 30 years ago. British by birth, she had moved with
her husband to Africa for what she thought would be early retirement. In the early 1980s,
she attended a lecture in Nairobi by American Esmond Bradley Martin, a world authority
on the illicit rhino-horn trade — then exploding exponentially.
This period marked the nadir of rhino extermination. According to the Lewa Wildlife
Conservancy (a group that has evolved from the rhino sanctuary originally founded by
Merz), in Kenya, black rhino numbers declined from an estimated 20,000 in 1970 to
around 450 in 2002, with an all-time low of 280 animals in the early 1980’s. This decline
was largely due to illegal killing for the rhino horn trade. A rhino horn goes for $80,000 a
kilo in Asia, and one horn alone weighs five or six kilos. “It is literally worth more than
gold,” says Merz, noting that the Chinese and Korean markets are driving the destruction
of the rhino, and that of tigers too. The threat isn’t from the occasional poacher, she
insists; it is from organized crime.
“Bands of 14 men armed with sophisticated weapons kill rhinos openly on the game
reserves. A lot of money buys a lot of corruption. The only way to protect them is in private
reserves, fully patrolled, well-secured and fenced, and such reserves cost a minimum of
$2.5 million per year.
Merz turned the plight of the rhinos into a personal crusade. She persuaded the Craig /
Douglas family, landowners in Kenya, to set aside 5,000 acres of their estate, Lewa
Downs, into a protected rhino sanctuary. They named this the Ngare Sergoi Rhino
Sanctuary.
In 1984 the sanctuary received its first rhino, a white rhino male called Mukora. By 1988
the sanctuary had 16 rhino and had doubled in size to more than 10,000 acres. Merz not
only spearheaded the creation of the sanctuary and its enlargement, she also personally
financed the project. By 1994 the whole of Lewa Downs as well as the government-
owned Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve had been enclosed within a 2.5-meter-high electric
fence, creating a 61,000 acre rhino sanctuary.
Merz not only extended financial support, she paid visits to community leaders, contacted
conservation groups, made speeches, and wrote articles to increase awareness of the
problem. She worked closely with the rhinos in the wild, and wound up raising a number
of orphan black rhino and successfully re-releasing them into the bush. One female
orphan in particular, Samia, became the focus of Merz’s best-selling book, and the basis
of her contention that rhinos are more intelligent than many wildlife experts believe. She
offers two examples:
One, when Samia was young and still living in the compound: Merz had “hidden” from the
rhino to see what she would do. Samia, not finding her human friend, had opened the
gate where the dogs were kept, using her flexible upper lip to negotiate the closure, then
followed the dogs as they used their noses to lead her to Merz.
A second example, which occurred after Samia had been re-introduced to the wild: Merz
was accustomed to walking on the sanctuary grounds with her dogs, and Samia usually
emerged from the bush to accompany Merz on these afternoon ambles.
One day they came upon three rhino bulls who were not kindly disposed to a human or
her dogs. Samia, obviously smaller than the males, had broken away from Merz and
charged up to the males in a belligerent manner, snorting and somehow
communicating, “If you want to charge the human, you have to charge me first.” The three
males had backed off and scattered.
Because of the close bond that developed between Merz and Samia, the Englishwoman
was devastated when the latter died in a freak accident in the wild, along with her infant
son Samuel, in 1995. In an interview in 1997, Merz commented, “I have lived my life with
animals and have hand-raised many, but my relationship with Samia was unique... I
never tried to discipline or hold her —she lived as a wild rhino, as part of the local
community. Yet of her own free will, she kept alive the bond between us.”
Although Merz is no longer running the rhino program at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, she
returns to Kenya two months a year to maintain contact.
Today the sanctuary boasts 50 rhino, a full 10 percent of all rhinoceros in Kenya. Merz
believes that the fate of these animals depends on the private sector because
governments are overwhelmed with pressing social demands — starvation, disease,
dehydration — in addition to corruption and inadequate infrastructure. She also believes
that pressure from the U.S. government on China and Korea to discourage trafficking in
rhino horns would be the single most effective way to ensure the future of Africa’s rhinos.
The rhino seems not to capture as much public attention as the elephant, but it IS the
world’s second largest land mammal and is, in Merz’s view, even smarter than the
elephant. A recent visitor to the Rhino Museum in Limpopo Province had no way of
gauging the intelligence of the 3-year old orphan black rhino living at the facility, but can
testify that the baby girl was statuesque and impressive. Visitors had the opportunity to
hand-feed her and she was polite and accommodating, scooping pieces of shrub and
greenery into her mouth with her prehensile top lip.
Whatever intelligence rhinos may have, it does not extend to their mating habits. This
baby female had been attacked by her father and left for dead by her mother when she
was a week old. Samia of Kenya may have been pushed over a cliff to her death by her ill-
tempered mate. Apparently rhino husbands are more demanding than their human
counterparts, and the wives are more compliant.
Fortunately, Anna Merz is neither compliant nor undemanding, and the surviving rhinos of
Africa -- few but feisty -- are a living testimony to her spirit.
For information on how you can help, visit www.lewa.org or www.savetherhino.org.
Published November 2006 in The Animal Companion.
Anna Merz, the Rhino Lady, doesn’t live
on a 61,000 acre rhinoceros sanctuary in
Kenya anymore. Her home today adjoins an
88,000 acre game reserve in South Africa,
which has its own resident rhinos. After all,
the woman who devoted much of her life to
Africa’s threatened rhino population shouldn’t
be far from the creatures she literally saved
from extinction.
Merz is in her early 80s, short white hair,
wiry and fit, a firm gaze and handshake.
She lives alone with her nine dogs on a
compound in the Lapalala Private Game Reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo Province.
She calls her compound Samia, in honor of the rhinoceros immortalized in her best-
known book, Rhino at the Brink of Extinction. Her three horses are cared for on another
estate not far away, and she goes riding several times a week. She rarely walks or rides
in the bush without her gun and knife. She isn’t afraid of stray rhinos, but buffalo,
baboons, warthogs and puff adders all present challenges to interlopers. Her favorite
horse, Grizelda, a purebred Boerperd, had been bitten by a puff adder on the muzzle a
few years ago and almost died. (The muzzle swells and the horse risks death by
asphyxiation).
However, the most dangerous predator in the African bush is man himself. Merz learned
this soon after moving to Kenya some 30 years ago. British by birth, she had moved with
her husband to Africa for what she thought would be early retirement. In the early 1980s,
she attended a lecture in Nairobi by American Esmond Bradley Martin, a world authority
on the illicit rhino-horn trade — then exploding exponentially.
This period marked the nadir of rhino extermination. According to the Lewa Wildlife
Conservancy (a group that has evolved from the rhino sanctuary originally founded by
Merz), in Kenya, black rhino numbers declined from an estimated 20,000 in 1970 to
around 450 in 2002, with an all-time low of 280 animals in the early 1980’s. This decline
was largely due to illegal killing for the rhino horn trade. A rhino horn goes for $80,000 a
kilo in Asia, and one horn alone weighs five or six kilos. “It is literally worth more than
gold,” says Merz, noting that the Chinese and Korean markets are driving the destruction
of the rhino, and that of tigers too. The threat isn’t from the occasional poacher, she
insists; it is from organized crime.
“Bands of 14 men armed with sophisticated weapons kill rhinos openly on the game
reserves. A lot of money buys a lot of corruption. The only way to protect them is in private
reserves, fully patrolled, well-secured and fenced, and such reserves cost a minimum of
$2.5 million per year.
Merz turned the plight of the rhinos into a personal crusade. She persuaded the Craig /
Douglas family, landowners in Kenya, to set aside 5,000 acres of their estate, Lewa
Downs, into a protected rhino sanctuary. They named this the Ngare Sergoi Rhino
Sanctuary.
In 1984 the sanctuary received its first rhino, a white rhino male called Mukora. By 1988
the sanctuary had 16 rhino and had doubled in size to more than 10,000 acres. Merz not
only spearheaded the creation of the sanctuary and its enlargement, she also personally
financed the project. By 1994 the whole of Lewa Downs as well as the government-
owned Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve had been enclosed within a 2.5-meter-high electric
fence, creating a 61,000 acre rhino sanctuary.
Merz not only extended financial support, she paid visits to community leaders, contacted
conservation groups, made speeches, and wrote articles to increase awareness of the
problem. She worked closely with the rhinos in the wild, and wound up raising a number
of orphan black rhino and successfully re-releasing them into the bush. One female
orphan in particular, Samia, became the focus of Merz’s best-selling book, and the basis
of her contention that rhinos are more intelligent than many wildlife experts believe. She
offers two examples:
One, when Samia was young and still living in the compound: Merz had “hidden” from the
rhino to see what she would do. Samia, not finding her human friend, had opened the
gate where the dogs were kept, using her flexible upper lip to negotiate the closure, then
followed the dogs as they used their noses to lead her to Merz.
A second example, which occurred after Samia had been re-introduced to the wild: Merz
was accustomed to walking on the sanctuary grounds with her dogs, and Samia usually
emerged from the bush to accompany Merz on these afternoon ambles.
One day they came upon three rhino bulls who were not kindly disposed to a human or
her dogs. Samia, obviously smaller than the males, had broken away from Merz and
charged up to the males in a belligerent manner, snorting and somehow
communicating, “If you want to charge the human, you have to charge me first.” The three
males had backed off and scattered.
Because of the close bond that developed between Merz and Samia, the Englishwoman
was devastated when the latter died in a freak accident in the wild, along with her infant
son Samuel, in 1995. In an interview in 1997, Merz commented, “I have lived my life with
animals and have hand-raised many, but my relationship with Samia was unique... I
never tried to discipline or hold her —she lived as a wild rhino, as part of the local
community. Yet of her own free will, she kept alive the bond between us.”
Although Merz is no longer running the rhino program at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, she
returns to Kenya two months a year to maintain contact.
Today the sanctuary boasts 50 rhino, a full 10 percent of all rhinoceros in Kenya. Merz
believes that the fate of these animals depends on the private sector because
governments are overwhelmed with pressing social demands — starvation, disease,
dehydration — in addition to corruption and inadequate infrastructure. She also believes
that pressure from the U.S. government on China and Korea to discourage trafficking in
rhino horns would be the single most effective way to ensure the future of Africa’s rhinos.
The rhino seems not to capture as much public attention as the elephant, but it IS the
world’s second largest land mammal and is, in Merz’s view, even smarter than the
elephant. A recent visitor to the Rhino Museum in Limpopo Province had no way of
gauging the intelligence of the 3-year old orphan black rhino living at the facility, but can
testify that the baby girl was statuesque and impressive. Visitors had the opportunity to
hand-feed her and she was polite and accommodating, scooping pieces of shrub and
greenery into her mouth with her prehensile top lip.
Whatever intelligence rhinos may have, it does not extend to their mating habits. This
baby female had been attacked by her father and left for dead by her mother when she
was a week old. Samia of Kenya may have been pushed over a cliff to her death by her ill-
tempered mate. Apparently rhino husbands are more demanding than their human
counterparts, and the wives are more compliant.
Fortunately, Anna Merz is neither compliant nor undemanding, and the surviving rhinos of
Africa -- few but feisty -- are a living testimony to her spirit.
For information on how you can help, visit www.lewa.org or www.savetherhino.org.
Published November 2006 in The Animal Companion.
| The Black Rhino and the Rhino Lady of Limpopo Province |
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| ANNA MERZ |