Rhino Poaching

My appologies for late reply but I have been away you are most welcome daffy glad I could help

Daffy join in the petitions Save the Rhino awareness, you will found them on FB, i do hope this is alright to post on here.

Doris

Hi Daffy,

Africam, most lodges in Sabi Sands and other parts of South Africa are taking a "better safe than sorry" approach to locating rhinos for poachers. Here is their current policy regarding rhinos:

Due to the ongoing problem with rhino poaching, Africam has taken the following steps... "We have asked that real time sightings of rhino NOT be posted on FB or the forum but we have implemented additional measures. One of those is that we will keep the cameras away from rhino for all our cameras. Please respect the decisions of Zoomies when you think there may be some critter around but the camera is not moving there."

Daffy this is the Africam statement on your question.

Due to the ongoing problem with poaching Africam has taken the following "We have already asked that real time sightings of rhino NOT be posted on FB but we have implemented additional measures. One of those is that we will keep the cameras away from rhino for all our cameras. So please respect the decisions of Zoomies when u think there may be some critter around but the camera is not moving there"

Hi Taffy

The reason they transport them upside down is that the straps under their arms and legs would put huge pressure on their organs due to their weight, they are transported for a very short distance it takes no more than four mins max to get them from their drop location to the awaiting trucks where they wake them immediately and walk them into the trucks, this is a minimal stress and no injury method of moving them, it is mainly black rhino that are moved this way as their habitat is thick bush, unlike the white rhino counterpart who is a grazer and prefers the open plains as their habitat, which makes it possible to get the transport trucks in close to them for capture.

re the release of ivory comment above,  yes if you read my initial reply to you in full, you will find the answer to that comment in there

No the actual de horning done by rhino farmers is nowhere like what the poachers do. With normal de horning they just saw off the horn close to the base, without injuring the rhino, the horn is made of keratin, same as our hair and nails this does not hurt the rhino.  The risk of anaesthetic is real and this cannot be done without anesthetising the rhino, as the rhino will attack the person trying to saw off his horn and quite rightly so on his part.  Large mammals have a higher risk of not recovering from a full anaesthetic.

The pics you are referring too with the blood,   those are rhino which were attacked by poachers, and not the rhino farmers.

Here is a very good paper to read on the pitfalls of dehorning rhino if you are interested

http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/117/1175856639.pdf

Another article on the selling of rhino horn which is in my blog

http://scorerjanineblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/points-to-ponder-when-you-think-that.html

Daffy in South Africa we are working very hard to try and eradicate the scourge of rhino poaching, things are not as simple as they seem, but take hart in the fact that we spend many man hours working on this problem here in South Africa it is not taken lightly, the same goes for the rest of Southern Africa either.

This is a subject that can fill pages and pages in this thread.

The main thing we are calling for is a total ban on any rhino hunting, and the total ban on the sale of rhino horn.  That way we know any rhino horn in the market is totally illegal.

We are receiving opposition on this from hunters and rhino horn farmers who have stock piles, if you read the articles on my blog you will see why even farming rhino for their horns and "flooding" the market won’t work, as in this instance if you look at the numbers the demand will always exceed the supply.

Besides the fact that it is incredibly cruel to the rhino to de horn.

Dafft "They are moving them out of the

wild and onto game reserves to make money.  There is one photo in

the magazine where the rhino is being moved by helicopter, and it

is hanging upside down head towards the ground.  They look desolate

after they remove their horns.  Why is this being allowed to happen?"

They are not moving those rhino out of the wild, in fact none of the wild rhino have been moved, it has been rhino who were on small farms that were moved to areas of better security

The photograph you are refering to was a re location of black rhino from the Eastern Cape to Limpopo province to a very large private game reserve, those rhino were part of a wild breeding expansion project run by Jaques Flamand a very well known conservationist who has had excellent sucess in increasing the numbers of black rhino in the wild with this project (Black rhino are still on the critically endangered list unlike the white rhino which is only classified as endangered at the moment)

They move the rhino out of very thick bush areas where truck cannot get in to load them, it is a very quick and kind method of moving the black rhino out of the thick bush for trans location they are mildly sedated for the trip to ensure that they suffer minimal stress.