IELTS Аудіювання. Тренувальні запитання до частини 1

For my presentation today, I want to tell you about how groups of wild black rhinos have been moved and settled in new sanctuaries. This process is known as translocation, and it has been carried out in Kenya in East Africa over the last twenty years.

So, the reason this is being done is connected with overpopulation of black rhinos in some sanctuaries. Now, overpopulation may seem like a strange problem to have, given how endangered black rhinos are globally, but in some carefully protected reserves, the numbers have grown so well that the resident rhinos are now competing fiercely for the limited food available.

One such reserve is Lake Nakuru National Park, where the rhino population had once been almost wiped out by poachers who killed the animals for their horns. But in 1987, the area was fenced and effective law enforcement was introduced. Since then, very few rhinos have been lost to poaching. In this safe environment, the population began to recover. Reproduction went so well that there were eventually too many rhinos for the park to support.

That success, though, led to a number of problems. For one thing, there was greater competition for browse and the leaves of preferred shrubs, which meant that some rhinos were beginning to lose body condition. As there was a limit to the amount of food in the National Park, the larger animals dominated the best feeding patches. The result was that they began to over browse certain areas of the park, causing serious damage to the vegetation. Some areas were stripped almost bare of edible plants.

That is why the decision was made to move several rhinos from Lake Nakuru to a much larger area called Sera Wildlife Conservancy in northern Kenya, where rhinos had not been seen for decades. But obviously, attempting to move significant numbers of large, powerful animals 400 kilometres across challenging terrain is a major operation.

So how did this translocation process work in practice? Well, unlike elephants, rhinos are largely solitary. Rather than moving family groups, the team selected individual rhinos based on their age. They focused mainly on younger adults, between five and ten years old, because these animals are most likely to adapt and to start a new breeding population. Older rhinos can become very fixed in their territory and don't cope as well with change.

Now, once a target rhino was identified, the next step was to immobilise it. The vets used darts loaded with a powerful sedative drug. This was a particularly tricky manoeuvre, as the right dose had to be calculated for each rhino's estimated body weight. The vets also had to dart the rhinos as they were running away from the approaching vehicles, to minimise the time spent under sedation.

As soon as a rhino began to wobble and go down, the team moved in to take care of it. To avoid the risk of breathing problems, the team had to make sure each rhino was carefully turned and propped up on its chest, with the head supported, so that the airways stayed clear. This is unlike elephants, which are turned onto their sides. Then, while waiting for the vet checks to be completed, one ranger stayed with each rhino to keep an eye on its breathing. If respiration dropped too low, the animal would need urgent medical attention.

After that, each rhino had ear notches recorded to give it an individual identity, in case it was ever recaptured later. Measurements were also taken of various features. Particular attention was paid to the size of the horns, since rhinos with larger horns are more at risk from poachers, and to the ears as well, because small differences there can also help with later identification.

The rhinos were then taken to a recovery area, where the sedative was reversed under careful medical supervision, before being loaded onto special trucks and transported to their new home over many hours.

So, what happened at Sera? The black rhinos translocated to Sera Conservancy settled in remarkably well. The project has generally been judged to have been a huge success, and not just for the rhinos themselves. Crucially, the local community now has new research opportunities, and biologists from local universities frequently come to study rhino behaviour at Sera. Poaching is no longer the issue it once was, partly because former poachers have moved into more reliable jobs as community rangers. As part of this transition, many of them voluntarily handed in their snares, which were destroyed by the rangers.

In fact, black rhino calves have been born at Sera Conservancy since the relocation. With over 100,000 hectares of protected land, there's plenty of space for the population to continue to grow. The translocation is also helping to rebalance the local ecosystem, as rhino browsing keeps certain shrubs in check, and provides a sustainable conservation model that could be replicated in other parks. All this has been a big draw for visitors, which has greatly increased revenue for the conservancy and surrounding villages.