End cruelty to rhinos!

Whenever I see a rhino these days, I wonder if these remarkable creatures will still be around when I reach old age.

End cruelty to rhinos!
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Cape Vidal, which is situated within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park in northern KwaZulu-Natal, is a favourite holiday destination of my family. In recent years, when driving from the St Lucia gate to Cape Vidal, we were always on the lookout for a family of rhinos grazing on a low hill near the road.

Two years ago, these rhinos were killed by poachers, and my family and I were so distraught by the news that we cancelled our plans to meet at Cape Vidal for Christmas that year.

This December, we went back and it was painful to drive past the empty hills where our rhinos (as we had started calling them) used to be.

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In our main feature this week (see pg 32), we speak to Dr Dave Cooper, wildlife veterinarian at Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, about the emotional suffering endured by those at the frontline against rhino poaching as first responders on the scene of slaughter.

My family’s personal experience of suffering a sense of loss when rhinos that had become familiar to us were killed, pales in comparison with the trauma and heartbreak experienced by Dr Cooper and his colleagues in the fight against poachers.

The violence and cruelty exhibited at the scenes of poaching crimes, as described by Dr Cooper, is enough to make even the most amicable among us want to take the law into their own hands.

According to the most recent statistics released by the Department of Environmental Affairs, rhino poaching cases have decreased from an all-time high of 1 215 in 2014, but not by much. About three rhinos are still butchered in South Africa every day.

I do understand that with about a quarter of the population jobless and hungry, the poaching of wildlife is not our country’s biggest problem. But the future most certainly looks bleak for a society that does not do everything in its power to defend vulnerable wildlife not capable of defending themselves against brutal slaughter.

Even discounting the cost to the economy or the threat that wildlife poaching poses to our biodiversity, we cannot allow the sheer cruelty of these crimes to continue. And there is a solution (for rhino poaching at least), one that not all conservationists would agree on, but if a man such as Dr Cooper says that the trade in rhino horn should be legalised, I am inclined to agree.