Milking the Rhino

Asia Pacific Premiere

Most nature documentaries ignore a key feature of the landscape: the villagers who navigate the dangers and costs of living with wildlife on a daily basis. Rural Africans are often depicted as the problem – they poach animals, encroach on habitat and spoil the myth of wild Africa. Director Aranda tells a nuanced tale of humanwildlife coexistence in post-colonial Africa.

The Maasai and Himba tribes face upheavals after a century of white-man-led-conservation. This turned the land into game reserves creating tribal resentment towards wildlife. Now they want a piece of the wildlife-tourism pie.

Community-based conservation tries to balance the needs of wildlife and people and is touted by environmentalists as “win-win.” The reality is more complex.

“We never used to benefit from these animals. Now we milk them like cattle!” a Maasai host of a community eco-lodge explains. His neighbour disagrees: “A rhino means nothing to me! I can’t kill it for meat like a cow.”

When drought decimates the grass shared by livestock and wildlife, the community’s commitment to conservation is sorely tested.

Charting the collision of ancient ways with Western expectations, Milking the Rhino tells a hopeful story of people taking on conservation on their terms.