The Rhino Lady of Limpopo Province

Merz turned the plight of the rhinos into a personal crusade, persuading the Craig/Douglas family, Kenyan landowners, to set aside 5,000 acres of their estate, Lewa Downs, for a rhino sanctuary, which they named the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary. The sanctuary received its first rhino, a white rhino male called Mukora, in 1984 and by 1988, by then expanded to 10,000 acres, was home to sixteen. Six years later, the entire estate, as well as the government-owned Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve, was enclosed by a 2.5-meter-high electric fence, creating a 61,000-acre rhino sanctuary.

Merz not only spearheaded the creation of the sanctuary and its enlargement but also financed the project personally. And she paid for visits to community leaders, contacted conservation groups, made speeches, and wrote articles to increase awareness. She worked closely with the rhinos in the wild, raising a number of orphan black rhinos and successfully rereleasing them into the bush. One female orphan, Samia, became the focus of Merz’s best-selling book and the basis of her contention that rhinos are more intelligent than many wildlife experts believe. She offers two examples:

Once, when Samia was young and still living in the compound, Merz hid from the rhino to see what she would do. Using her flexible upper lip, Samia opened the gate where the dogs were kept, then followed the dogs, who tracked Merz.

After releasing Samia, Merz regularly took walks with her dogs, and Samia usually emerged from the bush to join them. One day they came upon three rhino bulls who were not kindly disposed to a human or her dogs. Samia, smaller than the males, broke away from Merz and charged up to the males in a belligerent manner, snorting and somehow communicating, If you want to charge the human, you have to charge me first. The three males backed off and scattered.

Merz was devastated when Samia and her infant son, Samuel, died in a freak accident in the wild in 1995. In a 1997 interview, Merz said, “I have lived my life with animals and have hand-raised many, but my relationship with Samia was unique … I never tried to discipline or hold her. She lived as a wild rhino, as part of the local community. Yet of her own free will, she kept alive the bond between us.”