Photo: Moongateclimber · CC BY-SA 3.0
Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
The only place in Uganda to track southern white rhino on foot.
About
Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary in Nakasongola is where Uganda's rhinos came back. Poaching wiped the species out of the country by the early 1980s; a breeding programme begun in 2005 has rebuilt the herd, and animals from Ziwa have since been moved to Kidepo Valley and Ajai. Tracking is done on foot with a ranger, and the sanctuary sits directly on the road north to Murchison Falls.
Highlights
- Rhino tracking on foot
- Shoebill canoe trips
- Night nature walks
- A natural stop en route to Murchison
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Stories from Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
The Giants That Came Back
The ranger stops walking, lifts one hand, and the whole morning seems to stop with him. Ahead, perhaps thirty metres into a thicket of acacia scrub still wet from the night, something enormous is breathing. You hear it before you see it — a low, bellows-like sound, unhurried, entirely unbothered. Then the grass shifts, and a southern white rhino lifts a head the size of a jerrycan, ears rotating like small radar dishes, and looks straight through you.
Torch Media Africa · 19 Sept 2026 · 5 min read
Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
Uganda's Rhino Renaissance: Inside Ziwa, the Sanctuary Rewriting an Extinction Story
Nakitoma Village, Nakasongola District — The grass is chest-high and still wet with morning dew when ranger Moses Okello raises a fist, and the group behind him freezes mid-stride. Somewhere ahead, in a thicket of acacia and elephant grass, something the size of a small car is breathing heavily and tearing at bark. Okello points to a print pressed into the mud the size of a dinner plate, three lobed toes fanned wide, and says, in a half-whisper that carries more excitement than caution: "She's close. Maybe fifty metres." Minutes later the grass parts and a southern white rhino lifts her head, unbothered, chewing. Forty years ago, a scene like this was impossible anywhere in Uganda. Today it happens most mornings at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary — the only place on Earth where visitors can track rhinos on foot, and the improbable engine room of Uganda's most emotional conservation comeback.
Torch Media Africa · 19 Sept 2026 · 4 min read
Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
Where Uganda's Rhinos Came Home
The rhino does not know it is a miracle. It stands knee-deep in the elephant grass of a former cattle ranch in central Uganda, grinding through a mouthful of grass, utterly indifferent to the eight people fifteen metres away who have gone quiet in its presence. A ranger's raised hand is the only thing holding the group at that distance. For a country that watched its last wild rhino disappear in the chaos of the 1980s, this ordinary, grazing animal is the payoff of a two-decade bet that a species could be brought back from zero.
Torch Media Africa · 19 Sept 2026 · 4 min read