Death of Nandi Rhino at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary

Rhino Fund friends, members, followers and stakeholders. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of 22 year old Nandi. Nandi died from unknown natural causes on the night of 28th February 2021.

Nandi is the rhino on the sanctuary that has always been referred to as the “mother of the rhinos”. She was brought to the sanctuary in 2006 from Disney Animal Kingdom and in 2009 she gave birth to our first rhino here on the sanctuary namely Obama. Nandi had a strong character and was the rhino most feared by the rangers. She was clever and seemed to enjoy ambushing the rangers that were monitoring her. Nandi has been ill for some time now and in January, she gave birth to a female calf, Achiru. Unfortunately due to the fact that she was not well and could not care for or feed her, she abandoned Achiru. Achiru was handed over to Uganda Wildlife Education Center where she sadly died 10 days later. Both these deaths leave deep sorrow in our hearts and is a severe knock to the Uganda Rhino breeding program. Uganda Wildlife Authority along with the Pathology Department of Makerere University have conducted an extensive postmortem to determine the cause of her illness and subsequent death. We would like to thank them for this work that was conducted.