Home to the world’s largest population of black rhinos, this corner of Namibia offers a compelling vision of conservation, resilience, and change.

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We’d been looking for nearly five hours—scanning the dry grass for upturned pebbles and the horizon for a dark, lumbering shape—when we spotted the rhino bull. Next to me, tracker Mensley Karutjaiva shook his head with a resigned chuckle. We’d been up since daybreak, alongside three other members of the Save the Rhino Trust , looking for critically endangered black rhinos in Damaraland , a land of flat-topped mountains, rocky hills, and stark plains in the Kunene region of northwestern Namibia . While we scrambled about in the heat, the bull had been dozing in the shade of a milk bush. We watched as he stood up, as if posing for us, before lying back down to resume his nap.

I was traveling in a loop around northwest Namibia that took me to three new (or recently renewed) camps.…