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THE game scouts looking for a black rhinoceros wounded by poachers in Zimbabwe’s Save Valley Conservancy could hear her snoring but could not see her through the long grass.

Eventually, by making a lot of noise, they forced the rhino to stand up and were greeted by a sight so appalling that it took them a few moments to realise what they were looking at.

The whole face of the 16-month-old calf had been removed, including her eyes, in an attempt by the poachers to take off her small horns.

The “snoring” was coming through a hole in the nasal bone. She was very weak and lay down again. One of the scouts crept forward and darted her with M99 tranquillising agent, but the dart bounced off her hide and she did not get a full dose.

She was so dehydrated that the wound on her face was not even bleeding. The decision was taken to give her another dose of M99 in the hope that she would succumb. After a short while she died.

A closer inspection revealed a snare wound on her left lower leg and a deep infected cut above it. There were also slashes from a panga on her back.

The nature of the wounds to her face suggested that the poachers had thought the young rhino was dead and proceeded to remove the horns when she suddenly revived. Perhaps that was when they had slashed her with the pangas. In any case, another of Zimbabwe’s black rhinos had fallen victim to poaching.

At independence in 1980 Zimbabwe had 2,000, one of the largest groups in Africa. But a wave of poaching driven by demand for their horns in the Far East and the Arab world has drastically reduced the population. In the Far East the horns are desired as a traditional Chinese medicine for fevers and as a sexual stimulant. In fact they are composed of tightly pressed hair fibres and have no medicinal properties. In Yemen they are fashioned into highly prized ornamental dagger handles.

By 1993 poaching had left only 370 black rhinos in Zimbabwe and it was a critically endangered species. To save the few remaining animals, a national conservation strategy was launched in which some members of the surviving population were captured and taken to national game parks and conservancies.

The Save Valley Conservancy became a primary breeding area, and today the Zimbabwean population is believed to be about 530, mostly in conservancies in the Lowveld, in the south of the country.

Raoul du Toit, manager of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s rhino conservation project in the Lowveld, emphasised that this was a “very, very precarious success” that could easily be reversed by poaching, which has been rife since so-called war veterans and Zanu-PF sympathisers invaded white-owned farms eight years ago, supported by President Robert Mugabe’s government.

The chaotic land invasions precipitated the economic decline and lawlessness that culminated in the widespread violence that swept the country before and after the June 27 presidential election run-off.

Fourteen black rhinos have been killed by poachers in just a few months. Last October three were shot dead by members of the army, armed with AK47 rifles and dressed in camouflage, on Imire, one of the country’s last remaining game ranches, which lies east of Harare. Each rhino had a guard with it but they were beaten and tied up.

The shootings were senseless: all the rhino had been dehorned so that they did not have any value to poachers.

The killing of the calf at the beginning of this month was another grim setback, though Du Toit insisted that conserving the black rhino in Zimbabwe was not a lost cause.

Most rhino poaching, he said, was being “sporadically and opportunistically” carried out by locals, who knew where they were and killed them from economic necessity. But some were linked to corrupt officials.

Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, a wildlife advocacy group, said a new law being considered to nationalise the country’s remaining private game ranches could be the final blow. However, in a notable reversal of fortune, the authorities stopped war veterans seizing the Imire game ranch and expelling its white owners.

Rhino poaching is only one part of a grim picture of the destruction of Zimbabwe’s wildlife. The country had one of the largest elephant populations in the world. That, too, is plummeting as thousands are snared by poachers or shot illegally.

To help protect Africa’s elephant herds from poaching, a worldwide ban on the ivory trade remains in force. However, the ban does not extend to killing elephants for meat, and this has allowed the Zimbabwean authorities to increase elephant hunting without attracting international censure.

Some Mugabe loyalists have profited from the land seizures to allocate themselves hunting concessions around national parks. They have allowed professional hunters to bring in clients to shoot game without applying proper conservation rules. Even lion hunting for meat was being offered by a prominent professional hunter in a recent advertisement, although it is illegal to shoot lions for meat.

Happyton Bonyongwe, Zimbabwe’s spy chief, is one high-ranking official allegedly involved in the illegal game-hunting business. Well-informed sources said he received £1,000 from a professional hunter for every elephant shot on a concession bordering a national park. Hundreds were being shot.

Bonyongwe is blacklisted by America and Britain. He is on the sanctions list barring him and other Zimbabwean officials from travelling to the EU and America and freezing their assets.

Last week, posing as a middleman seeking to buy a rhino horn for an Arab sheikh, I was able in just a day of telephone calls in Harare to havea specimen delivered. The horn, hidden in a black plastic bag in a blue holdall, was brought to my room for inspection.

A rhino horn is worth as much as £60,000 in the Middle East and China. I was told I could buy it for between £10,000 and £20,000. I was also told how easy it would be to smuggle it out of Zimbabwe disguised in a consignment of car parts.

Further investigation revealed that the horn had come from the rhino horn store of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, which holds thousands of horns, none of which is allowed to be sold. The seller had tried to erase the store’s identifying stamp to disguise its origins, but I could still faintly make it out on one side.

Two days later, after more phone calls and surreptitious meetings in a private house ina residential area of Harare, I was offered two pairs of tusks, each weighing 45lb, from two illegally shot elephants. The seller said that, for a fee, he could easily arrange the paperwork to export them.

I said I would get back to both sellers. It seemed strangely easy to buy horns and ivory, but behind their sale isa sickening tale of wildlife abuse, as the appalling killing of the rhino calf in Save Valley Conservancy exemplified.

RHINOS IN PERIL
Africa’s black rhino population
2008: 2,600
2003: 3, 610
1990: 3,700
1960s: 70,000

Zimbabwe’s black rhino population
2008: 530
1993: 370
1980: 2,000

Sources: International Rhino Foundation, The Rhino Resource Centre

Video: China gets permission to import ivory from Africa

WWF official website

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