Ground Zero: The Rhinos Battle Cry

Ground Zero

The Rhinos Battle Cry 

 

 

I have been fortunate enough in my so far young life to have had life changing experiences with rhinoceros in South Africa. I have shared intimate moments with them, watched them from afar and up close and have even had life endangering moments with these marvels of the natural world. Getting up close to these creatures is one of the best feelings I have had the honour of experiencing, an animal that can vanish like a ghost into its habitat, a 1.5 tonne animal that can be so gentle yet also so unpredictable, a true force of nature. Unfortunately though, I cannot help stop my mind from filling up with the doubts regarding the rhinos survival, doubts of my children ever having the opportunity to see these animals, except in books and on DVD's, which saddens me more than words can describe. 

White Rhino - location classified

My Affinity

As a child I grew up with nature in my brain and wildlife by my side. The first time I ever saw a rhinoceros was at Cotswold Wildlife Park as a young lad (age unknown). I remember visiting there with my grandparents, who had a desire to fuel the interests of me and my brother in any way possible. I remember looking out of the car window after having made the substantial trip from home, the weather was dull, grey and raining, something I would call an average British summer. As I peered through the rain the figure that stood in front of me was of a large grey creature, something I could have mistaken for a rock had I not seen the long horn protruding from the animals head. It moved slowly, lumbering across the grass of its enclosure, my imagination saw an armoured, animated tank of proportions that I had never witnessed before. I have returned to Cotswold Wildlife Park countless times since that day, each visit a considerable amount of time is spent watching the rhino, including the growing up of the calf which was born in 2013. However it was not until a year later in 2014 that I got a chance to see these creatures in the wild for the first time as part of a study tour to South Africa with my university. An experience I documented in my published journal 'Chasing the Sun'.

"...down into the river bed we made out a group of five White Rhino, made up of two bulls, two cows and a calf, feeding and navigating the forest. The calf became quite inquisitive of the strange creatures all looking in its direction. It walked away from the group and up the verge so that it stood eye level with us, however, it soon stopped after another deep grunt by one of the bulls. Some of the other Rhinos came more into view. The group stood no more than one hundred metres from us, in the silence we could hear every movement and every breath of the marvellous creatures in front of us. If they felt threatened these Rhino would not hesitate in charging at us, which is why the guide kept a very close eye on every move they made. If anyone here knew the Rhinos behavioural quirks, it would have been him. They were as wild as could possibly be and kneeling down in those woods, I felt the same. The warning grunts by the bulls every so often made sure that we kept our distance from them, all equally intrigued and wary of us, a refreshing prospect in our ever shrinking world. To me, this was that feeling of being alive I was after. I felt a confluence of emotion within me. Everything I had been feeling all came together in that moment, it was a remarkable moment which had summed up the entire tour."

That afternoon was a moment that will stick with me for a very long time. Gaining an affinity with a completely wild animal became a very important driving force carrying me forward over the last year. The connection with nature you can form if you open yourself up to such experiences is invaluable in a world which seems to be growing more and more disassociated with nature coupled with what, in my own experience, I can only describe as a lack of empathy and apathy with regards to wildlife and animals in a captive environment.

Rhino calf - Cotswold Wildlife Park - 2013

I returned to South Africa in 2015 for a month on an internship which once again brought me face to face with rhinoceros. It included getting less than 50m from a mother & calf white rhino as they grazed in the late afternoon sun, watching them vanish into the veld only to reappear without a sound another 50m down the road. They were fascinating to watch, their sensual limitation becoming obvious to me as I watched from a close distance. Whilst still, they could not see us, yet they were aware someone was close their ears rotating like satellite dishes, heads held in the air to pick up any scent in the air. I was sat in a car on my way to a camp alongside the intern manager at the reserve; my heart raced the entire time. However, the rhinoceros sighting which was the most thrilling for me was also the most fearful encounter. Travelling on the back of a Toyota Hilux along with another intern & reserve manager after a day of attempting to redirect water from a borehole was a normal occurrence. As we travelled around a blind corner three black rhinoceros came into view on our left side, a unified "oh wow rhino!" quickly turned into 3 rather worried people banging on the roof of the Hilux, telling the person behind the wheel to drive as one of the animals, a young but sizable male decided that we had disturbed them so charged the truck. The young rhino got incredibly close about 50 centimetres away, head down ready to tip us and give us a free flying lesson. Luckily for us the rhino veered away as we picked up speed, leading our worried banging to turn into cries of celebration, which were heard back at the main lodge, a fair distance away. I was very relieved as the fear and adrenaline in my body turned into relief yet the grin on my face was huge... my first ever encounter with black rhinoceros!

Now I am sat at home back in England and the brutal reality of everything I learnt about the rhinos whilst out in Africa falls into place. I was lucky, in that the reserve I stayed at had a safe, healthy population of both white and black rhinoceros, although elsewhere all around the world the situation is balancing on a razors edge.

 

Crisis Point

At the turn of the 20th century is is believed that there was an estimated 500,000 rhinoceros across both Africa and Asia. However, an insatiable human desire for their valuable horns led to poaching on a mass scale. By 1970 global numbers fell to 70,000 and continued on a downward trend to 29,000 come the end of 2013. However, persistent conservation efforts around the world have helped prevent the downtrend continuing at such a fast pace. The critically endangered black rhino suffered a 96% decline within 23 years, from 65,000 in 1970 to only 2,300 in 1993, but the population has made a slow increase since then, now sitting at approximately 5,055 individuals; a stark contrast to the success of the southern white rhino whose populations tops 20,000 rhino. The downside of this increase though is a symmetrical increase in the poaching of white rhino which could quickly threaten the positive steps made. The situation in Asia though seems to be in dire straits. There are less than 100 Sumatran rhino left in the wild and only 35-45 Javan rhino left in existence, in a single small population in Ujung National Park.

 Table 1. World rhino population figures as of 2013. Courtesy of Save The Rhino & IUCN

Rhino species	Population
White Rhino Population Figures Subspecies
Southern white Ceratotherium simum simum	20,405
Northern white Ceratotherium simum cottoni	5
Black Rhino Population Figures Subspecies
Eastern Diceros bicornis michaeli	799
South Western Diceros bicornis bicornis	1,957
South central Diceros bicornis minor	2,299
Asian Rhino Population Figures
Greater one-horned	3,333
Sumatran	<100
Javan	35-45

 Poaching is the single largest threat to rhino worldwide and forms part of a broader term called 'wildlife crime' which according to WWF is the fourth largest global illegal trade. So why are rhino the centre of such a large scale eradication? The answer lies on their heads. Rhino horn has become one of the worlds most expensive and valuable commodities, rising prices ironically partly due to their lowering populations. Rhino horn fetches about $60,000 (£40,500) per kilogram, making it worth more than both diamonds & gold gram for gram. A vast difference from 1990 when horns sold for only between $250-500 per kilogram thus leading to only 15 rhino deaths in South Africa from 1990-2007. Come the dawn of 2008 though and the landscape changed as the war for rhino as we know it today began, in brutal fashion. Globalisation and economic growth made it easier for new illegal trade routes to be established, leading to 83 dead rhino that year, followed by 122 in 2009. After the majority of Chinese demand was diminished in the 1990's, the question remained, what made the resurgence in rhino horn take place in 2008? 

Gwynn Guilford, writing for The Atlantic in 2013 investigated the question, arriving at a grisly answer in conjunction with what was reported by a wildlife NGO in 2011. The results suggested that a vicious and false consumer rumour was to blame, sparking a widespread demand for horn in Vietnam. Guilford stated 'a rumour that swept Vietnam in the mid-2000's that imbibing rhino horn powder had cured a Vietnamese politician's cancer. That rumour persists to this day.'  Whilst some Vietnamese doctors vouch for rhino horn, Huijun Shen, the vice-president of the UK Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine explained that there is absolutely no record of using rhino horn to treat cancer in nearly two millennia worth of texts. The initial damage of this rumour led to the last rhino in Vietnam being killed in 2010 & Vietnam becoming identified as the largest user country of rhino horn. It is then by no coincidence that Vietnam's tally of multimillionaires has grown by a staggering 150% in the last 5 years as the desire for wealth becomes clear, rhino horn as a by-product also becoming a status symbol by the wealthy individuals who fuel and attract the involvement of ruthless criminal syndicates who go after the rhino on a worldwide scale. However, it is important to exercise a degree of empathy with regards to the Vietnamese public who are being taken in by such rumours due to the fear caused by a disease such as cancer, Guilford explains that '...rates of cancer are also rising 20-30% a year, both because prosperity has brought increased pollution and unhealthier lifestyles, and simply because more cases are being caught and diagnosed. However, many people still aren't very familiar with cancer, so that 70-80% of patients at Vietnam's four cancer hospitals are diagnosed only in late stages. That gives Vietnam a cancer mortality rate of 73%, one of the highest in the world'. This fear makes it easy for the criminals to prey on the scared, ill and weak, suggesting that by focusing on the background problems within a developing country it may indirectly help the state of rhino populations, but this is something that is impossible to know for sure. Regardless of whether for medicine, status symbol or even as a party drug the reality of a rhino-less world is quickly becoming apparent to many, particularly in countries such as Mozambique where the last rhino was killed in 2013 and in Zimbabwe where poaching is becoming less frequent, simply due to the vanishing populations as seen in the graph below.

South Africa houses the largest population of rhinoceros in the world, making it an important stronghold for the future of rhino conservation. Despite a population of over 20,000 white rhino in the country, Save The Rhino estimate that deaths will overtake births as early as 2016 making extinction an increasingly viable threat. The vast increase in poaching is undoubtedly partly due to diminishing numbers elsewhere alongside the paradoxically soaring price of rhino horn as a result. The below graph compiled by the South African Department of Environmental affairs shows just how much poaching has increased since 2000 leading to the record high number of 1215 deaths in 2014, equalling a worrying statistic of 1 rhino being killed every 8 hours. Even now, not even half the way into 2015, statistics released by South Africa's environment minister display record high numbers of rhino deaths, with poaching up 18% on the same four months last year, equating to 393 rhinos having being killed. A record nobody wants to see.

Data published by South African Department of Environmental Affairs (2015)

 

A doomed existence?

 

Copyright: CB2/ZOB/Brent Stirton/National Geographic

There is 1 subspecies of rhino that appears to be facing the end of the line sooner than I had ever expected. Pictured above is what Jonathan Jones describes as 'a picture of lonliness' in a recent article in The Guardian which was in all honesty heart wrenching, for all of the wrong reasons. The picture is of Sudan, the last male northern white rhino in existence. A 42 year old veteran who is protected every single second of every single day by armed guardians as he wanders his reserve simply trying to exist and survive. To know that this creature will soon vanish from the planet is a cause of great shame on the part of humanity, displaying our inability to change despite a civilised facade. There are only 5 northern white rhino on the planet, Sudan, 2 females at Ol Pejeta conservancy and 2 more females in captivity and all previous attempts at breeding have failed due to all of the specimens being elderly or incapable of natural reproduction, leaving artificial methods as the only realistic hope at saving the northern white rhino. However, another punch in the gut reveals itself as the reality of past IVF testing on the subspecies have proved fruitless and surrogacy remaining untested. Stores of sperm and eggs could be used to artificially revive the rhino in the future, but it is an inevitability that the northern white rhino will become extinct, as Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta's chief executive stated, 'The science is just not there yet.' The sad reality of the raging war.

"Sudan doesn’t know how precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his massive wrinkled face as he wanders the reserve with his guards. His head is a marvellous thing. It is a majestic rectangle of strong bone and leathery flesh, a head that expresses pure strength. How terrible that such a mighty head can in reality be so vulnerable. It is lowered melancholically beneath the sinister sky, as if weighed down by fate. This is the noble head of an old warrior, his armour battered, his appetite for struggle fading." - Jonathan Jones

As the numbers of poached rhino continue to increase by record numbers every year, it begs the question as to whether this is a war we can ever win? We invest untold amounts into the protection of rhinoceros yet they continue to be slaughtered. Countries such as South Africa and India have done incredible work over the years ensuring that this wonderful animal is not going to go without a fight. The rhino is the perfect picture of what evolution can achieve yet as if on a double edged sword that same process created us with a desire for futile destructiveness. African governments are adamant that they will win but until proper action is taken to 'cut the head off the snake' I see the chances of bringing the battle to an end in the near future as slim, which brings me to my last rhetorical thought, one that echoes that of Jones. Is it actually possible for humanity to do away with the base impulse that drives us to kill?

Copyright: Salym Fayad/EPA

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