A convoy of trucks carrying 40 'semi-wild' rhinos has rolled into KwaZulu-Natal, delivering a welcome ray of hope to a province under brutal siege by horn poachers.

Forty rhinos, formerly part of the world's largest privately owned rhino population, are among nearly 2,000 southern white rhinos bought last year by the African Parks group as part of an ambitious plan to rescue and then "rewild" the animals in game reserves across the continent.

The new home for this first batch of animals to be translocated is the 30,000-hectare Munywana Conservancy in northern KwaZulu-Natal, a Big Five reserve owned collectively by local communities and private landowners that includes the Makhasa Community Trust, the Mnqobokazi Community Trust, &Beyond Phinda and Zuka private game reserves

The rhinos were part of a massive private herd that multiplied over decades at a game ranch in North West owned by the entrepreneur John Hume, who planned to harvest and sell their horns legally to buyers in the Far East.

However, with no indication that the 1974 international ban on the trade in rhino horns would be lifted any time soon, Hume announced last year that he had run out of funds to keep his project going and put them all up for sale.

After the auction flopped, they were later purchased for an undisclosed sum by African Parks. The Johannesburg-based non-profit conservation organisation...