My first experience with rhinos was from a picture in my grandmother’s house.
It touched me because I was used to cattle and goats.
I’d never seen something so prehistoric.
From growing up, I’ve always wanted to be a ranger.
It just feels like the right thing or the moral obligation to
just try and do something.
Because other than that they’re going to be decimated.
If we do not do anything, they’re going to be on the brink of extinction.
But for Dumi and his team, fighting
this war against poachers isn’t easy.
You get very angry. You don’t understand why would a live human being
do that to an animal? And the only thing that is taken, it’s a horn.
It’s a waste.
Now he is taking drastic action,
doing everything he can to make them safe.
It’s very challenging.
There’s a lot of hills and valleys,
and animals quite often end up going to the worst possible areas.
Things can easily go pear-shaped.
Honing in on the target,
it’s time for the tranquilliser gun to do its work.
With the rhino successfully darted,
time is of the essence and the team
leap into action.
Safely sedated and under constant veterinary supervision,
the team began a process known as dehorning.
It may look brutal,
but this process doesn’t hurt the rhino.
Dehorning rhinos is a common way of reducing their value to poachers.
The reasoning is, if there’s no horn then there’s no motivation to kill them.
It doesn’t have any pain for the animals.
It’s like trimming your fingernails.
The rhino horn, it’s keratin,
and you always cut above the growth point and the animal doesn’t feel anything.
New research is showing that dehorning does influence
rhino behaviour, but long-term effects are still unclear.
In this recent time of such intense poaching,
dehorning is an immediate, if imperfect, response to the problem.
Rhino’s horn is iconic,
and such heavy-handed action is a last resort.
But for Dumi, the alternative is not an option.
It took a bit of time to get used to a rhino without a horn,
because to everybody in the world,
when you think of a rhino, you think of its horn.
But if it’s the only way to protect them, then we just have to live with it.
So at the moment, poaching is so rife,
so the more we dehorn them, the more they are safer.
We would rather see a rhino without a horn,
than seeing a decaying carcass of the rhino.
Safely and successfully dehorned,
there’s one final thing left for this rhino.
A tracker is painlessly attached to provide the team
with a constant GPS location for it, meaning they can keep an eye on its safety
and whereabouts at all times.
Unaffected by the procedure,
the rhinos go about their life, safer
and far less likely to be a victim of a poacher,
thanks to the team’s intervention.
But the war on poaching is far from over.
If you believe in something and if you get threats, you can get scared.
But if it means
losing your life in the process
is part of protecting what you believe in, then so be it.
It’s a calling.
I don’t think anybody else can stop a calling.
It’s something that you grew up wanting to do.
And we are doing it now and till the end of time.
Definitely there is hope for rhinos.
It’s going to be a long and bloody war,
but I think the good guys will prevail.
