Jeff Muntifering, a Minnesota Zoo conservation biologist and native of Sartell, Minn., spends 10 months of the year in Africa, where he works with Save the Rhino Trust to protect Namibia s black rhino population.

Save the Rhino Trust, a Namibian organization Muntifering partners with, works to monitor and keep watch over a black rhino population that was nearing extinction in the early 1980s.

Rhino poachers fill a demand in traditional Chinese medicine for the animal's signature horn, even though science has disproven any medicinal use for the rhino horn, which Muntifering likened to a fingernail clipping.

But in Namibia, poaching has ceased, mainly because of the government involving local residents in organizations such as Save the Rhino Trust, which at one point bailed poachers out of jail on the condition that they help patrol and save the rhinos.

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