Harare/Johannesburg - Poachers have shot dead three black
rhinoceros - a species listed as the most highly endangered large
mammal on earth - on a private conservancy, its owner said Thursday.
John Travers said poachers armed with AK47 automatic rifles
Wednesday night evaded the armed guard surrounding the rhino on Imire
game park about 100 kilometres east of Harare and shot dead two
females and a male, but left a four-week-old calf unharmed.
Zimbabwe in the 1980s had the largest population in Africa of
black rhino, about 7,500, but a wave of poaching all over Africa -
driven by demand for the horn in the Far East as a cure for fevers
and a sexual stimulant and in Yemen where it was used for dagger
handles - decimated the population, including Zimbabwe's.
The horn is composed of tightly compacted hair fibres, and has no
other pharmacological properties, according to biologists.
About 1,500 of the surviving population were captured in the
Zambezi Valley on Zimbabwe's northern border and taken to apparent
safety in national game parks and conservancies in the interior of
the country.
About 500 are still left, according to wildlife experts, but they
have come under increasing pressure this year.
The animals on Imire were under constant watch by armed guards,
'but this was a slick operation,' Travers said. One of the cows was
two weeks away from giving birth to a calf. 'Poaching is pretty
rampant now. Incidents like this are going to have a serious effect.'
He said the three animals had had their horns sawn off by wildlife
veterinarians about two months ago, a tactic used with some success
to deter poachers.
The decision to dehorn them was taken when poachers attacked
another conservancy outside Harare and shot dead three white rhino.
'My assumption is that these guys were after the horns but it was
dark and they couldn't see that they didn't have horns,' he said.
The three were among the hundreds of black rhino rescued from the
Zambezi Valley during 'Operation Stronghold,' a semi-military
operation to fight off the poachers, and came to Imire in 1985, where
they became the stock for a scientific breeding programme to build up
their numbers again.
Travers said there were three others - the progeny of the
slaughtered rhino - still on the conservancy.
Police had supplied six armed officers to live with the rhino for
the next two weeks and strengthen the defences against a possible
return by the poachers' gang, he said.
'It's getting out of hand,' said Johnny Rodriguez, chairman of the
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, a private wildlife organization.
In a large conservancy in the Mavuradonha area about 200km north
of Harare, the rhino population had fallen from 54 to eight in the
last year, while conservancies in the central Midlands province had
lost 31 in the same period and were down to 21 now.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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