By Ed Stoddard
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa, April 5 (Reuters) –
A lmost two rhinos are being killed every day in South Africa to
meet surging Asian demand for the animal’s horn which has become
more valuable than gold, platinum and cocaine.
Investigators in a remote corner of South Africa’s Kruger
National Park examined one of the latest victims of this crime
wave on Tuesday, a white rhino felled by a heavy calibre .375
rifle shot.
Killed only days before, the corpse had been stripped almost
bare by vultures and other scavengers, its ribs exposed and
rotting under the hot African sky.
The street value of rhino horn has soared to $65,000 a
kilogram as a belief takes hold among some in Southeast Asia
that taking it can prevent, and even cure, cancer.
National Parks data shows that as of Wednesday, 159 rhinos
had been killed in South Africa in 2012. At this rate, more than
600 will be lost to poachers this year compared with 448 in
2011.
“Our poachers come in from Mozambique,” said Ken Maggs, head
of the National Parks environmental crime investigation unit, as
his team swept the nearby bush with metal detectors.
Magg’s team find a shell casing 30 metres (100 feet) from
the corpse. They take a DNA sample from the dead animal which
can be used as evidence if the animal’s horn is found by police.
Journalists who were flown into the crime scene by
helicopter, somewhere close to the Mozambique border, were asked
not to give its precise location such is the fear that the
rhinos’ tramping grounds become widely known.
Continued…
