Saving rhinos: South Africa’s fight against Chinese demand for horns that’s pushing species to extinction
From surveillance planes to witch doctors, conservationists and park rangers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, are exploring every option in a desperate fight to save its rhinos, whose horns are worth more than their weight in gold
It is just after 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon and a trio of Project Rhino team members are kicking back in the lounge adjacent to their operations room. The armchairs and sofa are covered in camouflage fabric – even here, there’s no forgetting that a war is raging in KwaZulu-Natal: a war on the rhinoceros, funded by Chinese demand for the animal’s horn, which is worth more on the black market than its weight in gold.
KwaZulu-Natal lies in the southeast of South Africa, and the province has the greatest density of the endangered pachyderms in the country, with 21 per cent of the nation’s white rhino and 25 per cent of the black rhino populations.
Project Rhino is an association of conservation organisations, game reserves and security specialists battling poaching across KwaZulu-Natal. Two of its key initiatives are the Zululand Anti-Poaching Wing (or ZAP-Wing), which carries out aerial surveillance, and the K9 Unit, a new venture that employs dogs to track poachers.
When I meet with the Project Rhino team, the ZAP-Wing light aircraft has been grounded by damage to its fuselage, and base manager and pilot Ian Waghorn is waiting for replacement parts to arrive.
“In the two weeks the plane has been out of commission, we’ve seen an increase in attacks,” Waghorn says. “People know we fly around and they know the plane is out of action; news spreads fast here.”