Our Hearts Ache for the Rhino

6.28.12

Hello almal! (“Hello everyone” in Afrikaans). Today I want to introduce you to one of the largest problems facing South African wildlife today: rhino poaching. Sadly, I was ignorant of this issue before I came to South Africa—I was under the impression that elephants were poached for their ivory and the carnivores were poached because they killed farmers’ livestock. I have also heard of wildlife populations being inevitably decimated when their habitats are destroyed to create farms.

Rhino are poached for their horns. Two years ago, only 20 rhino were poached per year in South Africa. The rate has dramatically increased to a rhino poached every 19 hours. The rhino is in grave danger, and I do not think most of the world even knows about it. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone. I am sure (and desperately hope) that many Americans know about the poaching. I certainly have not heard much media about rhino poaching in the United States, and I am someone that watches the news daily.

There are many suspicions about which countries have the largest market for rhino horn in South Africa, but we do not have definitive answers because official research is still being performed. Many rhino conservation organizations such as Rhino Revolution (rhino-revolution.com) send members abroad to discover what the local people believe about the beneficial effects of rhino horn. They also visit the markets to discover whether the selling of rhino horn is prominent. Then, information is shared between organizations. The suspicions about rhino poaching are, at this point, just rumors because the proper research has not yet been performed. However, I want to share some of the suspicions with you even though I generally do not think spreading rumors is a good idea. In this case, I believe that spreading awareness of the problem is the most important thing.

According to Rhino Revolution, poaching increased after a Vietnamese minister declared that rhino horn cured him of cancer. It is believed that rhino horn has magical powers as a cure all and aphrodisiac in Taiwanese and Vietnamese cultures. Families will keep a rhino horn over their mantle and scrape a bit off whenever a family member becomes sick. Another market exists in Saudi Arabia, where rhino horn is a state symbol for princes and Sheikhs. When a prince reaches manhood, he will receive a dagger with a rhino horn as the hilt.

For a while, South Africans believed that the Chinese provided a large market for rhino horn, but the Chinese government recently agreed to help South Africa preserve its precious rhinos.

Unfortunately, government penalties for poaching do not serve as an adequate deterrent. A rhino horn will sell for much more than the fine for possessing a horn or poaching. Poachers receive only a few years of jail time, and when they are released, they return to their previous habits. According to one person I spoke to, a rhino horn can sell for $100,000. For poor people in developing countries, the profit is a large attractant to the poaching trade.

The market is so strong that a museum in London that housed a stuffed/preserved rhino was broken into; they tried to steal the rhino’s horn. The rate of poaching is so large that a sizable group of farmers and game rangers that own reserves collectively decided to dehorn their rhinos. If the rhinos no longer have horns, the poachers have no reason to kill them. The horns are kept in a safe in a secret location, and the rhino populations on ranches are kept secret as leaking of such information could draw poachers to the area.   

Today, after I initially drafted this post, I discovered that another rhino was poached today. It was a rhino that had been dehorned. What does this mean? We tried to dehorn the rhinos to protect them from poaching. The poachers are so frustrated with our anti-poaching efforts that they decided to kill the rhino anyway out of spite. Poaching the dehorned rhinos serves two purposes for the poachers. 1) If a poacher tracks a rhino for three days and discovers that the rhino is dehorned, then by killing it, the poachers destroy the chance that they will track the same rhino again. 2) Killing the dehorned rhinos makes the rhino a more endangered species, which makes every horn they sell worth more money. It makes me sick. 

The citizens of South Africa are terrified that one of their most majestic, iconic animals will be lost forever from the greed and superstitions of humans. The South African government is so slow at passing legislation that South Africans fear that by the time any protective legislation is passed, the rhino population will be too small to be sustainable. What will happen is that the small population will lead to limited genetic diversity. Limited genetic diversity leads to inbreeding, which then leads to deformities and degenerative diseases. At this point, the species cannot be saved (unless some new biological technology appears in the next several years).

Are there any other anti-poaching preventative techniques that do not involve dehorning the rhino? On my first day on the job, June 27^th, I learned about several techniques from Dr. Peter Rogers of Provet Wildlife Services, with whom I am working for the next 6 weeks. Cassie and I met Dr. Rogers and his vet-tech Janelle at the clinic at 6:30 am. We drove to a game reserve in Hoedspruit and were met by a helicopter pilot, the warden of the reserve, and the warden’s team. We drove in the backs of pick-up trucks through the reserve until the helicopter spotted an untagged rhino. The helicopter landed to pick up Dr. Rogers, who re-found the rhino and then darted it with a drug cocktail made of etorphine hydrochlordie (M99), hyaluronidase (Hyalase), and azaperone (Stresnil). M99 is a strong tranquilizer with ten thousand times the strength of morphine. Hyalase speeds up the absorption of the M99 by dissolving the material binding the muscle fibers to allow the M99 to disperse over a larger surface area. Stresnil is a neurolepic sedative that calms the animal.

The rhino walked around for 5 minutes and then fell down. The tranquilizers reduced the rhino’s blood oxygen to 40%, which is unsustainable for life, so Dr. Rogers reverses the tranquilizer slightly to increase the rhino’s blood oxygen. If Dr. Rogers is still concerned that the rhino is having trouble breathing, a drug called Fresenius (Dopran) will help the rhino breathe. We covered the rhino’s eyes with a blanket and I put lubricant in the rhino’s eyes. This is an important step whenever an animal is under anesthesia because the animal cannot close its eyes. If the eye is dry for too long, then the eye may be damaged.

The first anti-poaching technique was instilling three microchips in the rhino: one in the shoulder, one in the front horn, and one in the back horn. In order to instill microchips in the horns, Dr. Rogers drilled a hole in the horn, put in the chip, filled the hole with a wooden piece, and then wood glue to close hole. The microchip in the shoulder was inserted with a large needle. The microchips allow the rhino and its horns to be electronically identified in the event that the horns are taken or the rhino is killed. However, the locals believe these are tracking devices and so may be more reluctant to take the horn out of fear of being tracked and caught. This is not the case but the authorities prefer that the locals believe this rumor.

The second anti-poaching technique was the collection of DNA samples. Cassie, Janelle and I took hair from the rhino’s tail, shaved pieces from a toenail, blood from a vein in his ear, and shavings from a horn (the horn is not purely keratin and contains DNA), and Dr. Rogers took a piece of his ear as well. Hopefully, with all of these samples, a complete DNA profile of the Rhino can be constructed. Having the rhino’s DNA is extremely important. Without DNA, a poacher can only be prosecuted for the possession of a horn, not for the poaching of the rhino itself. DNA can be taken from the horn confiscated from the poacher to identify the owner of the rhino and deliver a larger legal penalty to the poacher.

The final anti-poaching technique we performed was notching the Rhino’s ears. To some people, this may seem brutal or cruel, but you must know that the rhino was not in pain because he was under anesthesia. We made small circular and triangular notches in the rhino’s ears that matched its identification number. This allows the easy identification from a helicopter as well as if the rhino is injured or poached. It also sends a message to poachers that they may have a greater chance of being caught if they poach this particular rhino—if the owner took the trouble to notch the ears, the owner may have taken other preventative measures as well. Dr. Rogers made the notches, and I followed behind him and padded all of the areas that were cut with potassium permanganate. These small black crystals caused a cauterization reaction to stop the bleeding capillaries. Dr. Rogers made me perform this task without gloves as my initiation. Since I had blood on my fingers from padding the ears, the cauterization reaction occurred on my fingers as well! It burned a bit and caused the black to remain on my fingers despite my best attempts at washing them. Later I discovered that scrubbing my fingers with a pumice rock and putting on a fresh coat of nail polish seemed to do the trick.

We also administered an injectable antibiotic to prevent an infection from the ear notches or injection sites. If the rhino had any pre-existing superficial wounds, we sprayed them with chlorhexadine, a common disinfectant used to treat open wounds. We also administered a bit of Stockholm Tar to help heal the wound. The tar has an antibacterial effect and acts as a fly deterrent.

When we finished treating the rhino, we administered reversals of M99. The animal antidote is diprenorphine hydrochloride (M50/50). However, this drug in the white rhino tends not to be  as effective; the M99 will actually recycle in the rhino and it will fall back asleep. In order to prevent this, Dr. Rogers also uses the human version of the antidote, naltrexone (Trexinol), which lasts longer in the rhino's system to prevent the recycling of M99. Both of these drugs were administered through an IV catheter in the ear. As the rhino woke, he was very groggy! He blinked a few times and looked at us, obviously confused. He curiously wobbled towards our trucks, and then eventually became bored of us and wondered off into the bush, as good as new.

We went through this process for three rhinos today, all of which were male. The day before I started working, Dr. Rogers treated an additional six rhinos with Cassie and Janelle. That’s a total of nine rhinos that they have protected on this reserve. We have plans to do more rhinos on another reserve this weekend. Janelle will not be there, so Cassie and I will be able to put our wildlife vet-tech skills to the test! I am very much looking forward to this weekend.

To find out more about rhino conservation in South Africa, please visit rhino-revolution.com. I plan on uploading an anti-poaching video with footage I have recorded while working with Dr. Rogers. Keep a look out for it. If you would like to see photos of me treating the rhinos, check out  my Facebook page. 

Sincerely,

Aria