An endangered black rhino in the Ongava Private Game Reserve.
Photograph by Dana Allen / Ongava Game Reserve
Forget tents, forget torches. This is camping with a difference. Around me, my boma a metre-high ring of thorny bushes provides shelter from any predators. Above me, a sky flooded with stars threatens to distract me from the job at hand. You may think that here, buried in 22,000 acres of Namibian bushland, I’d be on the lookout for megafauna: the leopards that roam the reserve, or the elephants that could mercilessly trample my makeshift camp. But I’m here with a different role, taking on a nighttime stint as a ‘Rhino Ranger’ with one task: to protect the world’s rapidly depleting rhino population from poachers.