The Khama Rhino Sanctuary Trust (KRST) was registered on the 26 th of October 1992.
The idea to start a nature reserve was initiated by a group of villagers in Serowe in 1989.
The Khama Rhino Sanctuary Trust is located on land around Serwe Pan, a large grass
covered depression with many natural water holes. This area was formerly a cattle post
and farmers had to be relocated from the area to allow for the setting up of the sanctuary.
The trust is an initiative between three villages of Serowe, Paje and Mabeleapudi. The
land around Serwe Pan was chosen because it is suitable for white rhinos as well as other
grazing animals (www.khamarhinosantuary.org).
Around the 1880s and the 1890s, Botswana’s rhino population was on the brink of
extinction due to illegal poaching. The government of Botswana, with the help of donor
agencies, especially the Natal Parks Board, decided to reintroduce them in Chobe and
Moremi game reserves in the 1960s. However, due to lack of monitoring and security,
poachers killed nearly all the animals that had been reintroduced. As a result, there was a
need to establish a protected area, which would offer security to try and increase the
number of rhinos in the country (Chief Warden Project Proposal, 2004).
The sanctuary covers approximately 4300 hectares of Kalahari sandveld and is located 25
kilometres north of Serowe along the Serowe-Orapa road, about 11 kilometres north east
of Mabeleapudi and 7 kilometres east of Paje village (Grossman and Associates,
12
undated). The Ngwato Land Board2
has allocated the Trust an additional 5000 hectares of
land and it is there that the suitability of that land to support black rhinos is being tested
(KRST Information Brochure, 2003).