Second Place

"Waiting For Freedom"

A young white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) waits in a boma, blindfolded and partially drugged after a long journey from South Africa, before being released into the wild in Botswana as part of efforts to rebuild Botswana's lost rhino populations. The southern white rhinoceros is classified as near threatened by the IUCN. Rhinos are killed by poachers for their horns, which are traficked and sold illegally in China and Vietnam, where it is believed - wrongly - that the horn has medicinal properties. For ten years now, poachers have been killing an average of three rhinos every day in South Africa alone. Botswana is saving rhinos from poaching hotspots in South Africa and re-establishing its own populations of rhinos having lost all of its rhinos by 1992.