Maurice Coreth

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Biographical Information

Count Maurice Coreth, (died in 1997) "an exuberant sportsman and swashbuckling adventurer whose love of big-game hunting led him to organize an acclaimed campaign to save the African rhinoceros from extinction, died in England on Feb. 11. He was 67 and the founder of Rhino Rescue...

"Whether it came from his aristocratic Austrian father, chamberlain to the last Emperor of Austria, or from his sporting English mother, whose uncle had been Master of the Wilton fox hunt, it surfaced early...

"Although he had no experience with big game, when a friend who was an official in Sierra Leone invited him to go to Africa to shoot marauding elephants, he accepted. He soon became such a recognized expert that he was the first amateur to be given honorary membership in the East African Professional Hunters Association.

"Settling on a farm in Kenya, the Count spent the better part of a decade riding horses (he won the Kenyan Grand National) and hunting big game. But when he had to give up his farm after Kenya gained independence in 1963, he left Africa and sought adventure on the high seas, typically without any experience.

"When Maurice Coreth founded Rhino Rescue in 1985 he foresaw a long-term battle against the poaching of all endangered wildlife, starting with rhino in Kenya where anti- poaching measures were required with the utmost urgency.

"His untimely death had given him only twelve years of intensive work into setting up his Trust but it was time enough to establish the Nakuru Sanctuary in Kenya, to integrate Rhino Rescue with the Zimbabwean Wildlife Department in Operation Stronghold and support projects in Namibia and Swaziland. He had attracted HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to the Presidency of Rhino Rescue and assembled a distinguished and knowledgeable list of Trustees. Above all, he had inspired in others his single-minded objective for the rescue of all endangered wildlife. "