Milking the Rhino

from Multimedia Library Collection:
Sound & Vision

Simpson, David E. Milking the Rhino. Chicago: Kartemquin 
Educational 
Films, 2008. Color, DV Cam, 83 min. https://youtu.be/VYTk0Zyc6lY.

Milking the Rhino is one of the first ever films to consider wildlife conservation from the perspective of those who live in close proximity to animals, rather than the usual perspective of remote armchair conservationists who don’t have to live with the consequences of firsthand interactions with wildlife. This powerful documentary profiles the lives of rural Africans in Kenya and Namibia who are choosing to participate in community-based conservation programs that empower them to have a positive stake in the future survival of wildlife and “milk the rhino” to get their fair share of ecotourism revenue. Putting people back into the frame of the wildlife documentary, this film serves as an important rebuke to most wildlife films that create imagined Eden where people don’t exist and don’t play any role in animals’ lives. (Source: Tales from Planet Earth)

© 2008 Kartemquin 
Educational
 Films. Trailer used with permission. 

About the Environmental Film Profiles collection

Further readings: 
  • Biggs, Duan, Franck Courchamp, Rowan Martin and Hugh P. Possingham. "Legal Trade of Africa's Rhino Horns." Science 339, no. 6123 (2013): 1038-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1229998.
  • Bond, William J., et al. "Ecological Engineering by a Mega-Grazer: White Rhino Impacts on a South African Savanna." Ecosystems 11, no. 1 (2008): 101–12.
  • Borchers, Henning. Jurassic Wilderness: Ecotourism as a Conservation Strategy in Komodo National Park, Indonesia. Stuttgart: Ibiden, 2004.
  • Büscher, Bram. “Inverted Commons: Africa’s Nature in the Global Imagination.” In “Fields and Forests: Ethnographic Perspectives on Environmental Globalization,” edited by Daniel Münster, Ursula Münster, and Stefan Dorondel. Special issue, RCC Perspectives 5 (2012): 31–37.
  • Carruthers, Jane.The Kruger Park: A Social and Political History. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995.
  • Goodall, Jane, et al. Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink. New York City: Grand Central Publishing, 2011.
  • Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa.“Seeing the National Park from Outside It: On an African Epistemology of Nature.” In “The Edges of Environmental History: Honouring Jane Carruthers,” edited by Christof Mauch and Libby Robin. RCC Perspectives 2014, no. 1, 53–60.