The Rhino War - National Geographic - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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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 rhinocerous 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.
Lf, 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 200 and 250,
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 rhinocerous.
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 fingernal.
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, tidely 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 vilirity,
the rhino horned dagger, or iambia.
The discovery of the new threat to the rhino
was made by Kenyan-based
geographer Esmond Bradley Martin.
I first came to North Yemem in 1978 when
I was doing a general sort of survey of the country
and discovered at that time that perhaps 50% of all the
rhino horn in the world was coming up here so Sanaa
for the making of dagger handles.
The rhino horn handle,
once reserved for the aristocracy,
is treasured far above
alternatives like cow or water buffalo.
A fine antique may sell for $15,000.
When polished, the horn takes on an amber opalescence
greatly admired for its subtle beauty.
Esmond Bradley Martin began an
international camaping to stop the rhino horn trade,
encouraging the use of substitutes.
After some 10 years,
his work is showing signs of success.
International trade has slowed in many eastern countries,
and since 1985, the North Yemeni government
has been enforcing a ban on importation.
But it's not early enough.
Where there is profit, men will trade.
The middleman, by transporting the horn from the smuggler to
the dealer, keeps business going briskly.
I will buy for about $700 per kilo, and sell
for about $1400 per kilogram, so I make a profit of
about $700.
The diplomats who smuggle
rhino horn come mostly from
Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Korea.
I saw rhino in Nairobi. I like it. I like rhino.
Despite the rhino's size and fierce reputation,
it is sadly easy to track, find, and kill.
Its thick hide offers no protection against
bullets and its behavior
patterns are too predictable
to elude the determined poacher.
In its simple daily routine,
the black rhino uses its prehensile
lip to tear off the leaves of
the prickly acacia bushes
and other scrubby plants.
A solitary creature, it lives on a home range
of from one to twelve square miles.
The rhino's territory may
overlap with another of its species,
but it is persistent in marking its range.
The animals spray urine or
track their dung across the
area, and so, spread their scent
Contrary to appearances,
the rhino-cerous is a peaceful being,
and only rarely takes
exception to the occasional trespasser.
Although it can hear and smell acutely
its eyesight is poor.
Help comes in the form of the oxpecker
which serves as a lookout.
In Swahill the oxpecker is known as"askair wakifaru",
the rhino's policeman.
When alerted by its tiny bodyguard,
the rhino may panic and run.
But since it is both curious and nearsighted,
it may be enticed from the bush, sometimes fatally,
by the human voice mimicking its call.
The first man to devote his life to the study of
rhino behavior was John Goddard.
While living in Tanzania's
Ngorongoro crater during the
1960's, he developed a genuine
affection for his lumbering, primitive subjects.
Goddard was deeply commutted to his work,
regardless of the hazards.
Even a tranquilized rhino can be dangerous.
Weighing up to one and a half tons, an adult bull represents
a serious threat.
Dentine joined in P2 between cusps.
Watch it!
Alright, P3 dentine almost joined between cusps.
For seven years, Goddard
carried out exhaustive field work, recording each minute
feature of the rhino's appearance and behavior.
Sixteen years after Goddard's own death at the age of 35,
the number of rhino in his research area
had plummeted from 108 to about 20.
Many were the victims of poachers.
In the vast expanse of East Africa's Savannah,
protection of the rhino has proved impossible.
Bob Oguya, warden of Kenya's Meru Park since 1983,
has one plane and 30 men to patrol 350 square miles.
The problem we are facing is
that these fellows with their automatics,
and our people with singly
action 303s it is watch them
and in most cases we lost them, because with their type of
firearm and with our types of
firearms they end up escaping our dragnet.
The rangers are at serious personal risk from
the armed poachers.
Their camel patrols stay out for weeks at a time,
in touch only by radio with park headquarters.
Despite the men's vulnerability and outdated equipment,
they are dedicated and loyal-even in the face of tragedy.
In December we lost our sergeant to the
poacher's bullets.
We saw him die.
Without adequate weapons we were helpless.
Too many of our men have fallen
because we could not defend ourselves.
If we had automatics instead
of 303s we wouldn't be losing our people.
With the rhino population at
such critical levels throughout Africa,
every animal is important.
In Kenya's Masia Mara Reserve,
rangers mounted round the clock
protection for this mother and calf,
shooting several lions who came too close.
Worried, the rangers moved the family to safer ground.
The calf was better protected,
but his mother kept trying to get back to her old territory,
leaving her baby open to attack.
The lions seized their chance.
After the incident,
the rangers turned to Daphne Sheldrick,
who raises wounded and orphaned animals
On one of the occasions that she was away the lions got in
and they caught him and
actually made a real mess of him.
Fortunately, they were young
lions and they weren't very experienced.
But they certainly chewed him up very,
very badly and he was dumped
on my doorstep more dead than alive.
I must say he's fantastically plucky little rhino.
In fact, his mother's a very placid, dozey old cow
so I expect this had made him have to be slightly more alert
The first thing we had to do, of course was get a friend,
because he'd been through tremendous trauma,
so we got the sheep.
They've been good friends ever since and wherever Sam goes,
so the sheep follows and
they play together and wander around together
and he'll just grow up here until he's weaned off milk,
and then we'll have to send
him somewhere to be a wild rhino.
Little Sam was lucky.
These rangers saved his ilfe.
Other rhinos have been less fortunate,
poached by the very men paid to protect them.
The shadow of corruption has fallen across much of Africa,
and Kenya has had her share of officials
who have cashed in on illegal rhino horn trade.
It became so bad during the late 1970s
that a major international scandal, Centering on the
president's wife, erupted and as a result of that,
The Kenyan government was so severely embarrassed
that it closed trade in all wildlife products,
and that did have a very needed effect
on the revival of certain species.
But the two species which showed no revival whatsoever
were the main trophy species, elephants and rhino,
and by the early 1980s,
it became clear once again
that major elements within the Wildlife Department
ex-Game Department people,
that is Perez Olindo,
who was the former director of the National Park Service,
and this has created a tremendous enthusiasm
throughout Kenya, and we feel that this is just in
time to revive
what is our most important effort, and that is a major
plan to save the rhinos in Kenya.
The problem of human beings is everywhere.
We have found people who are
colluding with criminal elements.
They have been prosecuted, they have been imprisoned.
And I'm afraid that I cannot, and I will not,
compromise with or collude
with people who are out to do things that will
harm conservation and wildlife in this country.
We cannot compromise with sin, I'm afraid.
The sin is not always hard to understand.
Within the poverty stricken rural communities of Africa,
there is a powerful incentive to poach
A family may be lucky to earn $20 a month.
Each member of a rhino poaching
gang may earn $100 or $200 per raid a year's income.
Although the big money is made by the middlemen, dealers,
and corrupt officials,
the pay is bountiful by local standards.
One Kenyan who has fought
against poaching in a very personal way
is Michael Werikhe.
Known throughout East Africa as "the rhino man",
he has walked more than 1400 miles and raised over $60,000
on his crusade to inform Africans of the threat to
the black rhino.
People are very hospitable,
very concerned about my welfare
not only my welfare alone, but even that of my snake,
which is a very, very strange thing.
Africans are very scared of snakes,
and to have people showing so much concern
about an animal they fear so much is a very touching thing.
Local people are just as concerned about the wildlife
and about the environment just like any other people.
And I think it is very important that
wildlife awareness should be taken to the people,
for it's they who have the final say
and they are ready to cooperate,
provided that they are given the right information,
the right encouragement.
Even with the work of dedicated men like Werikhe,
Kenya's war to save the wild
rhino has essentially been lost
Now, its best hope for
salvation may be the fenced sanctuary.
Although critics view them as glorified zoos,
they are far easier to manage than the huge reserves.
In some cases, it is private
citizens who have taken up the cause.
Solio Ranch, in the foothills of Mount Kenya,
is owned by Courtland and Claude Parfet
In 1970, using their own funds
they encircled 15,000 acres with a high cost,
specially designed fence,
creating a haven for Africa's embattled wildlife.
Over a ten year period,
they introduced 23 black rhino and 16 whites.
Protected, the animals thrived
In less than 20 years,
the number of black rhino had quadrupled.
Now Solio had a most unusual problem overpopulation.
The Parfets gave 15 of the black rhino
the Kenyan government's first enclosed sanctuary,
at Nakuru National Park.
Transporting the animals to
their new new home is a huge undertaking.
The selected rhino are located from the air.
Okay, dart is in. Keep it in sight.
It's running south.
A vet walks to within 40 feet of the unsuspecting animal
before using his tranquilizer gun.
A new, fast acting drug brings
the rhinocerous down in minutes, but great care must be
taken to prevent it from injuring itself.
A second injection of
antibiotics prevents infections
in the dart gun wound.
Though unceremonious, this rhino's
awakening is the next step in his relocation.
The animals are kept in holding pens
for about two weeks to overcome the stress of capture.
Soon, though, this young bull
will be in stalled among the
tourists and flamingos of Nakuru.
It has been a long and difficult jiourney for him,
but it is here that he can do
the most to help save his species.
Although the rhino may be well
protected in fenced sanctuaries,
the situation creates another problem-inbreeding.
Wildlife biologist Rob Brett lives and works in Kenya
on a remote private reserve.
He is closely observing the animals in an effort to find a solution.
Although rhino have been known about, wondered at, admired,
hated for such a long period, We know virtually nothing
about their breeding.
Such basic things as what turns a rhino on,
what makes them breed at optimum rates
It's crucial that we find out
as much about this sort of behavior of rhino
in order to conserve them
under the new conditions that exist.
Their favorite habitat is bush, they are generally nocturnal,
they spend most of the day asleep.
And, to observe the nitty gritty of rhino
sexual behavior takes first of all a lot of patience,
and a great deal of interest.
It's really ploying the minimum of equipment
a mixture between very low tech, lf you like, work,
and very high tech.
I am out at dawn every morning
looking for individual rhino from which to take data.
So well does Brett know this
subjects that he can identify every rhino
on the reserve from the lines and wrinkles of its footprint
He takes urine samples left from each animal
to determine their hormonal levels, ldentifying the
pregnant females and dominant males.
While the black rhino is
extremely secretive about its mating habits,
the white rhino, like these
on Solio Ranch, are less inhibited.
This dominant male has asserted his influence...
And now begins his courtship, which may last for many days.
He approaches the female and rests his head on her rump.
His interest may not be initially returned.
But his persistence eventually pays off and mating occurs,
sometimes lasting over an hour
Although rhinos are not monogamous, the female usually
mates with the dominant male in the area.
Afterwards, the pair go their separate ways.
If impregnated, the female will not give birth
for approximately 16 to 18 months, delivering
only one calf at a time.
A newborn rhino, which weighs up to 120 pounds,
will stay close to its mother
until she has a new calf for some two to four years.
The rhinocerous, slow to reproduce and quick to die,
faces an uphill struggle.
In the wild, there are so few
left that some never find a suitable mate.
In Kenya and elsewhere, the fight becomes increasingly
grim and ever more complex.
It can be argued that the numbers of rhino are very low,
but I think it would be
negligence on behalf of the world
to just turn their backs on this country now and say,
"All is lost. There are only 400 rhino left,
they're not worth saving."
We have had long years of experience with poaching,
which is what Zimbabwe's having now armed poachers.
Zimbabwe's getting it for the first time.
I wonder whether they're
actually gong to be able to save their rhino
by just having armed patrols and shootouts.
I know in Kenya that they're fighting armed gangs there,
and there are contacts taking place.
But we have, right from the onset, taken on this task
as a war and not a conservation exercise
purely and simply.
The situation bears a more than passing resemblance
to full fledged guerrilla combat...
It is a deadly serious mission
Glenn Tatham commands Operation Stronghold
from a camp on the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe,
where he protects the last
large wild rhino population left in the world.
The project involved moving 250 rhino,
one third of the valley's population,
to safer ground.
The fight to protect the rest is a desperate one.
Rangers live year round in camp with their families.
Who realize that some of the men may die in armed conflict.
What we're doing here is to fight the poachers.
Every day that a group of poachers are in here,
they are potentially able to
kill two or three or maybe even four rhino.
One group killed six rhino one morning here,
here in the Zambezi Valley.
To our north is Zambia, and these poachers are
crossing from there to here.
The river is the international boundary
but there is no barrier as such.
There's two border posts on that section of the river.
We cannot cover 150 miles of
river frontage every day of the year, lt's an impossibility.
You'd need more than a division of men to do that.
Even then because of the bush
warfare we'd be fighting, it's an impossibility.
As in Kenya, the odds are staggering,
and the danger is real.
Operation Stronghold has just Many
of the rangers are veterans from opposite sides
of Zimbabwe's war of independence,
now fighting together against a common enemy.
Facing heavily armed Zambian-based poachers,
the rangers shoot to kill with the government's consent.
Since 1985, more than 30 poachers have been shot dead,
and at least 20 taken prisoner
In the same period, some 330 rhino have died.
Until the network of dealers and middlemen is broken,
Zimbabwe's rangers know they
can do little more than stem the tide.
Privately, many wonder how long it can go on.
We've got people here who've been in the bush for two years,
they go out for 20 days in a month, they occasionally have
success, But it's very very...
demanding on them physically, It's demanding on
their families, its demanding of their well-being.
They are buoyed up with enthusiasm every time
you have a successful contact, and perhaps this is a
good enough reason to have a contact,
is to boost enthusiasm, If no other reason.
You have captured, you have recovered
one and what direction is the other poacher running to?
No problem, as soon as the
chopper arrives we will get into your...
I guess the big thing is now, is to get all the others,
if he's gonna be on the ground
for too long I'll have to go fly over and pick him up...
One down, one running.
Okay, can't we get them in and start leap-frogging them?
The support units are on their
way now and... 401 is sending down...
And the one, as I said, had been shot in the groin,
was in fact bleeding.
I don't know how, in fact, he got as far as he had.
He scrabbled about 15 paces on his stomach and died there.
It all happened so very quickly.
One tends just to pick up little images
of what was happening rather than as an overall thing.
You get images of rounds from the people behind you,
the expended cartridge cases landing on your head.
The gang had killed four rhino in as many days.
Each poacher had risked his life for a few hundred dollars.
The rangers know that Zimbabwe is the last stand for
the wild black rhino.
Still, the dilemma they face is a terrible one.
One often wonders about the human life for a rhino life,
And at this stage it's a human life for about 20 rhino lives.
The morality is perhaps secondary to the fact
that there doesn't seem to be any other way in which
we can in fact stop these blokes from getting away
and getting back.
A group of poachers would come into the country,
they'll start killing rhinos.
We've got to react to that, and one must never forget
the central objective of this whole exercise,
this whole operation, is save the rhino
We are not manhunters, we're not mercenaries.
We are here as conservationists.
But desperate situations require desperate measures.
No, there's no joy in killing people, but it's a job,
and quite obviously, we're just pawns on either side
for men who are just exploiting people
to make themselves rich.
Forty five million years of nature, unraveled by man
in an evolutionary microsecond
Still, the rhinocerous can still be saved.
If a major international effort were mounted to
stop the poachers, the rhino
would almost certainly bounce back.
But until the incentive to kill is removed
the profit for the poachers,
middlemen and dealers the battle will go on.
If the fight is lost, the rhino will be doomed
to exist only as a drawing in a child's picture book
of things that once were and are no more.