{"id":68412,"date":"2012-11-06T10:41:02","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T15:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=68412"},"modified":"2012-11-09T09:27:24","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T14:27:24","slug":"uconn-student-plays-hands-on-role-at-rhino-sanctuary-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/11\/uconn-student-plays-hands-on-role-at-rhino-sanctuary-part\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Student Plays Hands-on Role at Rhino Sanctuary, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of UConn Today\u2019s journalists reports on the experiences of a UConn senior whom she met when she traveled to South Africa this past summer. The story, which is told in two installments, is part of a special four-part series.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Natural<\/a>
Natural resources major Alana Russell ’13 (CANR) spent the summer of 2012 in South Africa. (Stefanie Dion Jones\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For UConn senior Alana Russell \u201913 (CANR), wildlife conservation signifies far more than the subject matter that she reads about in class. The natural resources major spent her summer face-to-face with the devastating facts and figures confronting endangered wild animals \u2013 especially after she took on an unexpected role in the life of one baby rhino.<\/p>\n

As part of an African field ecology course taught by her advisor, Morty Ortega, associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Russell traveled to South Africa this past June. Following a spring semester class in a lecture hall on the Storrs campus, the course culminated in a three-week trip over the summer to Entabeni Game Reserve, a private reserve located in the South African bush. There, students are immersed in hands-on field ecology instruction for up to 15 hours a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve always wanted to do,\u201d Russell says about visiting Africa. \u201cYou see it in the media, in books, in movies, and it\u2019s something you can never grasp until you come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

During their time at the reserve, UConn students attend various lectures \u2013 one of which focuses on the widespread problem of poaching. Several days into the three-week trip, Russell recalls sitting in this lecture and seeing the gruesome photographs passed around the classroom depicting a rhino discovered by an anti-poaching unit. The victim\u2019s horns had been hacked off, and its calf stood helplessly next to the mother\u2019s mutilated body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat picture of the mom that had been poached and the calf standing there \u2013 it just got to me, and I thought, \u201cWow, I wish I could do something about that,\u201d Russell says.<\/p>\n

She would soon be doing far more than she could have imagined.<\/p>\n

Dwindling Numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even today in the African bush, the illegal poaching of rhinos is escalating unabated, a constant threat to the large land mammals\u2019 already decimated populations.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A black rhino calf in South Africa. (Stefanie Dion Jones\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year, 448 rhinos were poached in South Africa alone for horns that are prized in certain cultures for their ornamental and alleged medicinal uses, as well as for their monetary value. Today, just 1 kilogram of rhino horn will fetch up to $60,000 on the black market. In fact, the profitability of the world\u2019s illegal wildlife trade now stands second only to the drugs trade.<\/p>\n

Poaching, in even cruder, crueler forms, continues to increase exponentially each year, yet just 5 percent to 6 percent of poachers are convicted for their offenses. By August of this year, already more than 250 rhino poachings were reported across South Africa \u2013 and these figures do not include the many baby rhinos that are orphaned and left for dead by their mother\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

Until recently, anti-poaching units that tracked down the scenes of these grisly crimes resorted to shooting any orphaned rhinos they found, having no facilities available that could care properly for these creatures.<\/p>\n

This past summer, however, things started to change. Plans had been in the works in South Africa to open the world\u2019s first dedicated baby rhino orphanage, with the goal of caring for and rehabilitating rhinos orphaned by poaching before ultimately releasing them back into the wild.<\/p>\n

Around the same time that Russell set eyes on the poaching photographs, the orphanage-to-be had been notified of a young black rhino found in the Kalahari Desert. The starving calf, about two months old, was suffering from a prolapsed rectum, a result of having eaten sand for an estimated two weeks.<\/p>\n

With the rhino urgently in need of 24-hour care, the orphanage turned to the Entabeni Nature Conservancy for additional help. At Ortega\u2019s recommendation, Russell\u2019s name surfaced early on \u2013 and her reaction to the prospect of serving as caregiver affirmed Ortega\u2019s decision to recruit her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked if she wanted to take the opportunity of helping on a project in which she was going to have to take care of a baby rhino. Immediately, she started crying,\u201d Ortega says. \u201cHer reaction to me was a very positive answer: She was the person that would care about a baby [rhino] more than anybody else on the camp at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before she knew it, Russell was abandoning the three-week field ecology coursework and emailing home to inform her family that she would not, after all, be returning home at the end of the school trip. She would be staying for the rest of the summer break to be a mother \u2013 to a black rhino.<\/p>\n

For the second part of this story, click here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Other stories in the series are Hands-on UConn Course Takes Students on African Journey<\/a> and A City Girl in South Africa: Training to Become a Nature Guide<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

To learn more about the three-week African field ecology course, which fulfills a General Education requirement, visit <\/em>http:\/\/bit.ly\/RgJM3C<\/em><\/a>. To learn more and to support the Rhino Orphanage, \u2018Like\u2019 <\/em>facebook.com\/TheRhinoOrphanage<\/em><\/a> or follow @RhinoOrphanage on Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A wildlife ecology class brought natural resources major Alana Russell face to face with conservation issues and led to an unexpected opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":68243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-68412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-affairs","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 17:57:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68412"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68635,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68412\/revisions\/68635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/68243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68412"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=68412"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=68412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}