The Elephants of Thula Thula — a risky rhino rescue

The clatter of helicopter blades split the peace of the Zululand bush. The chopper swooped down, coming in low, herding our two rhinos, Thabo and Ntombi, towards the open savannah grassland. I watched from the top of a nearby hill, nervous and on edge. Tranquillising and dehorning our rhinos is a major undertaking and potentially risky — for the animal, and for the humans involved. But it has to be done to protect our rhinos against heavily armed and ruthless poachers who would kill them to get their horns.

The rhinos tried to outrun this great bird, but to no avail. As it drew close, the vet, Trever Viljoen, leaned out of the open side of the chopper with a rifle. I caught a glimpse of his slim frame, and his face, intently focused on his mark. He took aim and fired.

He fired a second time.

I didn’t see the tranquilliser darts hit their target, but within minutes I could see the effects of the M99, a drug 1,000 times stronger than morphine. The two rhinos staggered and swayed. The vet’s team and our rangers and volunteers ran towards them to control their fall and prevent them from injuring themselves. The rhino must come to rest on its chest and not on its side, so that it can breathe properly, and so that the vet can reach the horn to remove it. The assistant vet tied a cloth over each animal’s eyes, and plugged their ears.

With shaking hands, an ashen-faced young volunteer placed a tarpaulin under Ntombi’s huge head, and another did the same for Thabo. The horns are so valuable — they fetch $90,000 a kilo on the black market in the Far East — that even the tiniest shavings of horn must be gathered up, not a sliver left to attract poachers. Larry Erasmus, our security consultant, had assembled a team of ten armed men, trained anti-poaching dogs and several specially reinforced security vehicles to keep watch over the whole operation, to deter poachers and keep us and the rhinos safe.

Trever got straight to work with a chainsaw, first on Thabo, then on Ntombi, cutting away at the horn with intense focus. As ever, I was calmed by his presence in these stressful situations. He is always meticulously prepared and gives our animals excellent attention, whilst answering my questions with patience and humour.

Although it’s painless for the rhino, a dehorning is a brutal, noisy thing to watch. Morgan Dias Simao, a filmmaker from France, was positioned right behind our vet, his cameras trained on the sleeping giants and the swarm of attendants. This was Morgan’s first experience of dehorning. I could see the tears in his eyes behind his sunglasses. I knew how he felt — the first time I saw the vet start up a chainsaw and go to work on Thabo’s horn, I cried as I witnessed what we had to do to keep our precious rhinos safe. I had now grown somewhat used to it, as we dehorn the Thula Thula rhinos every fourteen months. A rhino horn is simply keratin, the same substance that makes up our hair and our fingernails. Just like our fingernails, it continues to grow, and poachers would think nothing of killing a magnificent animal for just an inch or two of regrowth.

The dehorning itself is surprisingly quick. Within minutes, the horns were removed. Each one was immediately weighed and the rhino’s name and the position of the horn is written on the base in permanent marker — ‘Ntombi Front’ and ‘Ntombi Back’. A little hole is drilled into the horn, a microchip is inserted and it is sealed with wood glue. The vet signs it off, and the horn and the vet’s paperwork are stored in a secure vault, not on our premises. The microchip is registered with the wildlife authorities, who keep a record of all the horns, and issue us with a certificate. The microchipping programme allows them to keep track of legal horns, to link each removed horn to a specific rhino and to trace stolen horns.

A DNA sample from the horn forms part of the state’s rhino DNA database. When poachers are found in possession of a horn, matching its DNA to a specific rhino on a specific farm can help police to build a strong case and get a conviction.