National Geographic: The Rhino War

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OK, there's the mother.

Now look at this

might pull the skin to the side there.

Yeah.

This is a loft of.

Right, shall we look

for a place to land?

Today in Africa,

a bitter war is being fought.

Both man and beast are dying...

and the enemies are greed,

corruption, and ignorance.

The battle is being waged

over the black rhino, sought by

poachers for its valuable horn

In the past 15 years, over 95%

of the animals

have been slaughtered.

Each day, Ranger Dolf Sasseen

patrols the Zambezi Valley,

But for this mother and calf,

he was too late.

A lot of people would say,

"What does the rhino do to

the bush?"

As a bushman you could

turn around and say,

"The rhino has been created by God

as part of creation,

we need it".

To look at it,

it's a beautiful animal

and we can live side by side.

You do not want to show to

your children one day,

How an elephant or a rhino

look in a storybook.

That's not what life

is all about.

Life is not a storybook

It is a reality.

For 45 million years,

one of the planet's most

primitive mammals wandered

the plains

and forests of the world

with little to fear.

The rhino has few

natural enemies,

but that role has

now been filled by man.

More than 30 species of

rhinoceros once existed.

Today, there are only five,

all endangered.

In Asia, the Javan, Sumatran,

and Indian rhinos

are down to critical levels.

In Africa, the white rhino is

somewhat more stable.

Closely confined in a few well

guarded South African reserves

But the black rhino is hurting

towards extinction.

If, as we say, in

the early 70s,

there were 65,000 rhino

on the continent,

We are down to 4,500 now.

That's an indictment upon

somebody or a group of

people or nations.

It's come down throughout

Africa, this disease,

this cancerous situation,

plundering our wildlife of

Africa.

Through the years,

the black rhino had

already been

depleted through much of

its range.

It is the recent wave of

slaughter, though, which has

devastated the animal.

Starting in the early 70s,

poachers swept through

East Africa,

all but wiping out

the populations of Kenya,

Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia,

and Mozambique.

Now, they have begun

to threaten Zimbabwe.

In 1977, the situation took an

even more severe turn for

the worse

in Kenya's Meru National Park.

In one three month period,

the toll on the rhinos reached 53

and rangers began to

be attacked

and killed by armed

Somali poachers.

Peter Jenkins was the park's

warden during that time.

When I went to the Meru park

we had a population

of black rhino between

and then in the late 70s we

were hit by a different type

of poacher,

this was the shifta poacher

with his automatic.

And when I left Meru '81,

the population was down to

about 25.

Today, it's three.

The beginning of the

rhino's decline can

be traced back to the

mid-nineteenth century.

Modern guns were introduced

into Africa,

And killing became easy,

efficient, and popular.

Some Europeans developed a

taste for rhino meat...

others hunted for the

sheer sport of it.

When a rhino charges a man

that's nothing.

But when a man charges a rhino,

that's new.

So here you see the

tables reversed.

We are now in a with rhinos.

Osa dislikes rhinos more than

any animal on earth.

For years they have been

chasing her and here was

a chance

to give them a taste of their

won medicine.

Mr. Rhino is public enemy

number one in Africa.

He's afraid of nothing.

If your first shot doesn't

stop him, good night.

It is not hunting, however,

that poses the great threat

to the rhinoceros.

Instead, it is the demand for

the horn

Ironically, the very feature

of the animal that evolved for

its defense

may bring about its extinction

Though hard and strong like bone,

the horn is made of keratin,

like the

human fingernail.

It grows throughout the rhinos

life at a rate of about three

inches a year.

On a full grown adult,

it may reach over four feet.

For thousands of years,

rhino horn powder has been a

treasured commodity in

the far east.

Ancient oriental tradition

views it as an

effective fever reducer

and an indispensable cure all.

The use of rhino horn

as an aphrodisiac

has been greatly exaggerated,

and is found only in

parts of western India.

As early as the sixteenth

century, rhino horn powder

was recommended in a classic

encyclopedia of Chinese

medicine, tidily consulted today.

The best horn is from a

freshly killed male.

Black is better than white.

The tip has the most virtue.

Pregnant women should not take

the powder or they will miscarry.

Modern medicine considers the

claims highly unlikely,

and almost all far eastern

countries have officially

banned the importation of

rhino horn.

Still, the local market

flourishes.

In the back street of Taipei,

Bangkok, and other Asian cities,

African rhino horn retails

for up to $7,000 per pound.

For the past decade the export

of rhino horn has been banned

in most African countries,

but smuggling continues,

to the dismay of

conservationists.

Back in the 1970s

when there was very little

effort to control the trade,

the outlets were very diffuse

indeed-going out on aircraft

or boats and perhaps over land

as well.

But nowadays, I think that the

routes have become rather

more confined

and most countries seem to

point a finger at Burundi

as the major exit point

in Africa for rhino horn.

So I believe a

very large proportion

must be going out from

this one country.

But we also know from

countries like Zimbabwe

and Tanzania

that a certain amount of rhino

horn has gone out in

diplomatic pouches.

It's almost certainly an

international

illegal network, if you like,

involving corrupt

government officials,

corrupt businessmen,

and corrupt politicians,

and it's this sort of

triangular Mafia-like alliance

which has made it so powerful.

It's not only affected rhinos,

it's also affected elephants

and ivory-the two are very

closely linked.

Throughout history,

the port of Mombasa,

many kinds of illegal trade.

Rhino horn, leopard skins, gold,

ivory each dealer has

his specialty.

This pile of ivory,

taken from 500 elephants,

was hidden in falsely

labeled spice crates.

It was seized by

Kenyan customs officials

while awaiting shipment

to the Middle East.

The route is an old one,

for thousands of year,

Arab dhows have sailed these waters,

sometimes with valuable

contraband aboard.

In this way, the horn of

countless slaughtered

rhino have made

their way across the sea.

In recent years, the horn has

often ended its journey in

North Yemen.

It is here that one more

damaging twist to the

black rhino story has

been added.

The oil boom of the early 70s

created lucrative work for

migrant Yemeni

laborers in Saudi Arabia

and other Gulf states.

For the first time, the workers

had ready cash to

spend on luxuries,

including the ultimate

symbol of virility,

the rhino horned dagger,

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