In South Africa, orphaned baby rhinos find hope at Entabeni Safari Conservancy

Entabeni Safari Conservancy in Limpopo, South Africa, is the country's newest and largest orphanage for baby rhinos whose parents were poached for their horns. The facility is equipped to nurse calves back to health, even offering intensive care to sick calves in need of 24-hour care, giving them a second chance at life.

The conservancy's first resident is an unnamed 220-lb, 4-month-old calf who was rejected by his mother.

See photos of the young rhino at the Daily Mail.

"He'll want to feel your hair and your face with his lip and he wants to get into everything he's not allowed to. He's just like what you'd imagine a little four month old to be," American conservation student Alana Russell, one of the orphan's five caregivers at the centre, tells the AFP.

Once the orphanage in fully completed in mid-September, it will care for 25 to 30 young rhinos.

Conservation manager Arrie van Deventer tells the AFP that the centre's goal is to equip the rhinos for life in the wild:

"As they become older, we will release them into areas bigger and bigger and bigger, until they are about two-and-a-half to three years old, and then obviously they are released back into nature."

The orphan will have limited contact with humans, and then will be assigned surrogate parents: two adult white rhinos, Mike and Nanna, who will "teach the rhino to be a rhino."

In South Africa, the demand for rhino horns, with their supposed healing properties, in the black market is on the rise. In 2011, 448 rhinos were killed. This year so far, almost 300 have been poached for their horns.

The Entabeni Safari Conservancy hopes to boost the species' dwindling numbers.

"If they can go back into the wild, if they can breed, if they can successfully rear their own calves, then it's conservation," said Karen Trendler, a conservationist at the orphanage.