Founding Release, 2025
Sixty years. Then, one morning, rhino again.
A purpose-built sanctuary inside the Segera Conservancy now holds a founding community of Eastern Black Rhino — the first this land has seen in six decades.
Founding Release, 2025
A purpose-built sanctuary inside the Segera Conservancy now holds a founding community of Eastern Black Rhino — the first this land has seen in six decades.
Black rhino disappeared from this stretch of Laikipia decades ago — a casualty of poaching pressure and a landscape that, as a cattle ranch, could no longer support them. Bringing them back wasn't a matter of simply deciding to. It required land healthy enough, secure enough, and large enough to hold them first.
Everything documented on The Land — the fences dropped, the reforestation, the corridors reopened — had to happen before a rhino sanctuary was even a realistic proposal. This wasn't the first chapter of the restoration. It's one of its clearest results.
A dedicated, monitored boundary built specifically for the sanctuary — separate from the conservancy's open corridors.
Ranger patrols and tracking cover the sanctuary continuously, working alongside the wider anti-poaching unit.
Reforestation and grazing recovery gave the sanctuary the vegetation density rhino need to thrive, not just survive.
Ongoing health monitoring and rapid-response veterinary support, coordinated with Segera's own conservation team.
Fences dropped, corridors reopened — the first condition for any future sanctuary.
Reforestation and grazing recovery, under the Tree of Life project, restore the vegetation density rhino require.
A dedicated, secured perimeter and monitoring systems are established specifically for the sanctuary's founding community.
A founding community of Eastern Black Rhino is released into the sanctuary — the first rhino here in sixty years.
The sanctuary is watched, not left — this is the beginning of the work, not its conclusion.
Once widespread across East Africa, the Eastern Black Rhino was pushed to the edge of local extinction by poaching through the late twentieth century. Segera's founding release is a small, deliberate contribution to a population that is still, globally, considered critically endangered.
The sanctuary is funded through Segera's hospitality revenue and the Zeitz Foundation — but conservation partnerships, research collaboration, and direct support all extend the work further.
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The rest of what came back once the land recovered.
See What Came Back
The team responsible for keeping the sanctuary secure.
Meet the Team
See exactly where the sanctuary sits on the wider landscape.
Open the Map
A stay at Segera funds the monitoring that keeps this founding community secure.
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