It is amazing that when one sees a program on rhino poaching as the one that was recently aired on Carte Blanche and one is horrified by the death of these amazing creatures for the sake of mans sexual lust. Or, as they indicated in the program, that one very senior politician in Vietnam had claimed to be cured of cancer by taking rhino horn and now huge quantities of rhino horn are being exported illegally to Vietnam for medicinal purposes. Does this again drive the rhino to extinction?
Then the big debate, should we not dehorn all of our rhino’s and sell the horns to the buyers from the Far East and at least we still have live rhinos but without their magnificent horns. However what better sight than rhinos lifting up their heads with horns held high and with tail arched running through the veld ? They look so dignified with their horns pointed to the sky. What do you think we should do?
All of this is pure semantics because nothing could ever have prepared me for my first sighting of a rhino slaughtered for its horn. We were called out to the scene of a poaching in our area and I do not think the memory will ever leave me. As we approached the scene in the early evening, it appeared as if the rhino was just having a siesta and as the lights of the vehicle lit up the corpse one could see the devastation where the horn had been brutally chopped off with a machete or an axe. A magnificent big cow in the prime of her life, a cow that was so used to people that it would stand and watch people get really close, viciously cut down in a hail of bullets.
I counted eight bullet holes in her head so the killer probably just stood in front of her and mowed her down and hacked off her horn before disappearing into the veldt. The killers were disturbed by neighbours, coming to investigate the gunshots, so they never had a chance to take off the smaller horn but that was no consolation to anyone.