Today was our last day in the field and I SPOTTED A RHINO! Now I am definitely ready to go home. I had accomplished everything I wanted to on this trip. We had processed and organized all the fecal samples to bring back to the U.S. for analysis. We had trained Thando to collect samples and data. And I found a rhino.

Last year, we were in Addo for two weeks and never spotted one rhino. Well, this trip we have seen one almost every day, and I found one! We were checking a latrine for fresh feces and I heard a branch break. I looked up into the mountainside and, sure enough, there was either a rhino or a rock or a very large warthog.

We all pulled out our binoculars and yep, I was right…a rhino. It was the male that was often spotted in this area. It must be his territory. He always leaves a large scraping at the latrine. This made my day, my week, my time in Addo. It was so rewarding. We had set out to do what we needed and wanted to do. It was time to come home.

This homecoming would be different. I was bringing Jordie back with me. She is staying in Chicago for a month to process and analyze samples. And Dr. Elizabeth Freeman is coming too. So we will spend some much-needed time together working on manuscripts and planning our next steps for this project.

Rachel Santymire

We met up with Thando, our new South African SANparks Research Assistant, to go into the field, move the camera traps to new locations and train him on the sample-collection methods.

SANparks Research Assistant Thando Mendele learning how to collect black rhino fecal samples.

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Jordana had to take the Land Rover into town for repairs while Elizabeth and I continued to work on the samples. We prepared all of the sample vials for transportation and went over protocols for the field techniques. It was another entire-day process, but we did finish everything that we needed.

Rachel Santymire

Today was a fecal sample–processing day. We started organizing all of the samples that we would be bringing back with us to Lincoln Park Zoo for hormonal and parasite analyses. We have around 150 fecal samples from which Jordie has extracted hormones using our field-extraction method.

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We got up early this morning because we were invited by South Africa National Parks to watch as they located black rhinos (via helicopter) to immobilize them for ear notching. Each rhino in Addo Elephant National Park is darted around 3–5 years of age and given a name and specific pattern of ear notches that can be used to identify individuals on photographs taken by camera traps. Rhinos can also be positively identified by other anatomical features, such as their horn and scars on their bodies.

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