Once widely distributed across sub-Saharan Africa the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) has suffered a dramatic decline in numbers due to demand for their horns. From an estimated population of 65,000 in 1970 numbers dropped by more than 96% to a population of less than 2,500 by 1992. The escalating poaching in the last thirty years paralleled the dramatic increases in the price of horn in far eastern and North African markets. Although numbers are currently recovering in most populations, the incentives to illegal hunters from poaching continues to outweigh the risk of detection. However, the number of unprotected populations has diminished. The continued recovery of the black rhinoceros requires regional cooperation in subspecies metapopulation management, conservation and security. Due to the precarious state of the black rhino in the SADC region this requires an initial focus of achieving a minimum population increase of 5% per annum over the next ten years. The goal beyond this is enhancing overall biodiversity, ensuring economic sustainability, and stimulating local community conservation awareness and involvement in the protection and wise use of the black rhino. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes have the objective of protecting and improving local livelihoods, wildlife resources, and the ecological conditions on which they depend. The hypothesis runs that through improved local control over resource management communities are empowered, and if viable enterprises are linked to the biodiversity of an area, generating benefits for a community, these stakeholders will act to counter any threat to the resource. Over the last two decades conservation agencies have incorporated these principles to address the dwindling populations of African wildlife outside state-protected areas on agro-pastoral communal lands. This report describes the ecological and human-induced constraints on a population of black rhino from a region of Southern Africa. It was completed at the request of the MET and the SADC Regional Rhino Programme to act as a case study for understanding interactions of rural livelihoods, ecotourism, and biological management in a free ranging population of black rhino. In addition, the report aims to comment on the application of a proposed protocol for mitigating human effects through limiting access, and to develop a standardised methodology for the further analysis of ecological and rhino population data.