Poaching in practice

Update: We're pleased to report that the poachers responsible for the incident described below, which happened in Solio, Kenya, have been apprehended. The photo shows Benson Irungu, Solio Head of Security and Sgt Lang’at of the Game Scouts Unit holding some of the weapons used by the poachers.

June 2009
Felix Patton is a rhino ecologist who specialises in monitoring systems and the identification of individual rhinos, particularly using photo-identification, for population management. He is currently in the final stage of a PhD with Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is also a member of Save the Rhino, and has just sent us this account of a poaching incident in Laikipia, Kenya. The location of the incident is deliberately not made clear, while investigations continue.

It was just another early morning, 6.15am, start to find and photograph three white rhinos that had so far evaded me. I also had to take two rangers to their respective camps, which meant I had to choose the fastest route using the East boundary road. Once done, I searched the areas where two of the rhinos were usually found and then headed down the inner West road to relocate a new mother and calf. Looking intently for my objective, I noticed a rhino that seemed to be crouched with its back towards me on an open space just off the road. As I got nearer I could see it was badly injured with a gaping hole in its rear with a lump of skin hanging off. I was surprised that it did not stand up as it would surely have heard the noise of the car. I drew up parallel to it and turned to see the shocking sight of just flesh and blood where the horns should have been. Poachers had been at work and only a few hours before.

You have to understand that some five years ago I gave up a good job, company car, computer, fax, mobile phone, pension – the works – and sold my house and nearly all my possessions to become an unpaid, full-time rhino ecologist taking a Masters degree in conservation biology and a rhino-oriented PhD in the process. My whole focus was to help save rhinos. There I was staring at the very thing I was trying to help prevent. I was devastated. Then it crossed my mind that had I not had rangers to taxi and had used my planned route, I might well have disturbed the poachers while they were working.

Immediately I alerted the Reserve’s Head of Security, who gathered together a team of rangers and called for support from the police in the form of the locally based General Service Unit, best explained as a heavily armed ‘commando’ force. All were soon on the scene.

An examination of the carcass revealed it was an adult male, which I was able to identify as Sungari due to a unique half-moon shape in the bottom of his left ear. Sungari was some 30+ years old and had spent most of his life in the Reserve. The horns had been expertly removed with a panga (machete) and with some blood still liquid, it appeared that the rhino had been killed within a few hours previous.

There were several marks on its flanks which were identified as spear marks and it seemed to have been killed by a spear being inserted in one side and pushed through to the other via its heart. This could not have been done by a poacher hurling the spear, the rhino must have been immobilised somehow. The wound in the rear was manmade, probably by two or three cuts with a panga. It was surmised that an arrow with some form of poison was fired into the rear of the (probably running) rhino which incapacitated it. Then the spear would have been sunk in to kill the rhino before the horns were removed. The arrow would have been cut out of the rump so as to leave no evidence.

As we had found the rhino shortly after it had been killed there was the chance that the poachers’ footprints could be identified and followed. Best for this are highly trained bloodhounds and the nearest were kept at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. A phone call had their team on the road in minutes. It is to all rhino reserves’ benefit to catch poachers, which leads to a very high level of cooperation and exchange of information. I met their vehicle and took them to the scene. There were no footprints left around the carcass, but rangers had found where the poachers had entered and exited the Reserve by cutting the fence. Here, there were a few good prints in the soft sand. The dog handler collected the soil in a plastic bag and gave it to the dog to smell. He was off immediately heading in what seemed to be the direction of a main road. However, after only a few hundred metres, the track turned back, past the main gate, through bush areas and grass plain to a newly built village east of the Reserve. It seems the poacher (by now it was only a single track), had gone in the wrong direction on leaving the Reserve and, realising his mistake, turned round. This suggested that perhaps the poacher was someone new to the area. The dog could go no further with all the different smells of the village hiding those it was following. Close, but not close enough.

Meanwhile senior officers of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) arrived to examine the carcass and make an official report on the incident and bring their own resources to bear in catching the poachers. Black rhinos, of which Sungari was one, are the property of the people of Kenya and the KWS are mandated to manage them on behalf of the State. They had brought with them a metal detector to determine if any metallic evidence (bullet, arrow head and so on) had been left in or around the rhino. There was none.

This was not the first poached rhino in the region. Several rhinos and many more elephants have been killed over the past months. There is likely to be more than one gang at work, as some poaching is done using semi-automatic weapons, some by cable snare and others by bow and arrow and spear.

Today, rhinos need more human help than ever. Poaching pressure is at its highest. No country is immune. Every National Park, Game Reserve and Conservancy which holds rhinos is at risk. Spare a thought, then spare some money, to help protect the rhino from its only predator – Man.

Felix Patton

If you wish to make a donation in response to this personal account, then please send a cheque made out to “Save the Rhino International” and send it to: Save the Rhino, 16 Winchester Walk, London SE1 9AQ.  We will restrict any such donations to the Association of Private Land Sanctuaries (APLRS) for its Rhino Security and Intelligence Claim Scheme. The aim of the Scheme is to enhance the security and monitoring of rhinos in Kenya’s private rhino sanctuaries by increasing the motivation and morale of security personnel through cash incentives. This is backed up by informer information that leads to arrests and the recovery of firearms and illegal equipment used to poach rhino. All APLRS members are located in security risk and banditry-prone areas, and hence they employ additional security personnel for extra vigilance, in order to offer maximum security and monitoring of black and white rhinos, to prevent poaching for their horn. Please write “APLRS” on the back of your cheque. Thank you.