Last year the Javan rhinoceros, the rarest large mammal in the world, was declared extinct in Vietnam. The last one was killed in October in Cat Tien National Park, found with a bullet in its leg and its horn sawn off.
As a species the rhino is at least 50 million years old, but if something is not done to curb the appetite for its horn, it may not last the century. The poaching trade in both rhino horn and ivory has moved to a new level and now operates in a way that is comparable to drug cartels or arms dealing. Penalties are often paltry in Africa, from where much of the horn originates, and poorly enforced in Asia, where it ends up. Some crime syndicates are expanding their existing operations into the ivory and horn trade – the risks are fewer and the profits can be greater.
Technology has helped poachers enormously. From 2008 until mid 2011, 776 rhinos were killed in South Africa, where poachers are using GPS, helicopters and semi-automatic weapons. In east Africa the technology is not yet so sophisticated, but illegal arms are readily available from Somalia, and the perpetrators, driven by poverty, are inventive. Night-vision goggles have been stolen from the Kenyan army, and chancers have been known to jump over fences by the light of a full moon and kill rhinos using guns fitted with silencers made from bicycle pumps. And it’s not only rhinos: last year in southern Africa 14 armed poachers were killed in encounters with park rangers. And in Kenya last Christmas a ranger was shot dead in a revenge attack by poachers.
The reason for all this slaughter is based on a deep-rooted, ancient belief that is nothing more than myth. Rhino horn is composed of keratin – gelatinous hair – with no beneficial medical properties; just hundreds of years of reputation and rumour. Chinese materia medica list it as a method of reducing fever and febrile convulsions. But even if it did work, one cannot help asking, when the rhino population of Africa has been reduced by 96 per cent in 50 years – why not take an aspirin?
transparent rhinos are grazers, and indigenous to South Africa; black rhinos are browsers, and indigenous to east Africa. The names are misleading because their colour is the same. It is thought that transparent was a mistranslation of the Afrikaans word for 'wide’, denoting their big, square mouth. The slightly smaller black rhino has a prehensile or hooked lip for plucking fruit and leaves. They differ in character, too – the transparents are more passive.
On June 16 this year the three black rhinos from Port Lympne – Zawadi, Monduli and Grumeti – were loaded on to a converted DHL Boeing 757 at Manston in Kent and flown to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The rhinos, which had been crate-trained for the 11-hour flight, followed by a six-hour drive to Mkomazi, needed little sedation. At Mkomazi the large welcoming committee included the British high commissioner and the director general of Tanzania National Parks. Lunch was held on the airstrip. Speeches were made. The BBC filmed. The crates were opened and the rhinos wandered cautiously but without hesitation into their new bomas. They were given water and immediately started munching the local 'browse’. It was a textbook translocation.
Three months later they have all settled in well. 'Grumeti is confident,’ Lucy Fitzjohn says, 'Zawadi is cautious, and Monduli’s time is still to come. He has to wait for the females to establish themselves and then he will follow, because of their different temperaments and their existing relationships at Port Lympne.’ In time, they will be introduced to the other Mkomazi rhinos, and the hope is that they will breed.
And there we have it. When people refer to 'wild rhinos’ today, it means rhinos not kept in zoos. A rhino in a game reserve or a sanctuary or a national park is considered a wild rhino. 'Wild’ once meant roaming the land at will, not behind electric fences and protected by armed security guards. In that sense, there have been no wild rhinos for a long time, and there will never be wild rhinos again.
Jessamy Calkin travelled as a guest of the Africa specialist The Ultimate Travel Company (020-7386 4646), whose charity initiative supports the work of Tusk, Lewa and GAWPT. Ian Craig and Steve Trent will be giving the American Express Conservation Lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, London, on November 15. Tickets from tusk.org. Any Telegraph reader booking an African safari with The Ultimate Travel Company will receive a free pair of tickets to the RGS lecture. All proceeds from lecture go to Tusk and the tickets include reception with opportunity to meet the speakers
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