Tale of brutal rhino hackers

BOOK: TELLS HOW NDLOVU GANG DARTS, SAWS OFF HORNS AND LETS ANIMALS DROWN IN OWN BLOOD

- Jim Freeman

Sharing beers with game rangers above the Kariega River in 2011, they imparted horrid news: rhino poachers in that part of the Eastern Cape were no longer just shooting animals with high-powered rifles, some had begun darting them with tranquillising drugs.

What followed was heartless. Incapacitated animals' horns were chopped from their faces and they were left to drown in their own blood. It was an almost silent assault and perpetrators were gone from the scene before antipoaching units were aware anything was amiss.

Apart from the carnage, the modus operandi cast suspicion on local vets, many of whom were - and continue to be - passionate conservationists.

Having travelled widely and often throughout the Eastern Cape for well over a decade, it seems every game reserve I have visited has a heartrending tale of rhino poaching to tell.

Some of them have happy endings, such as that of Kariega's Thandi who, having only just survived having her horns hacked out, went on to deliver several calves, but these are few and far between.