I write to you as the representative of Ocean Messengers NGO, environmental and nature conservation is our main aim.
At around Noon, on 11 February 2011, I was requested to drive with Mike Holmes through to the Kariega Game Reserve near to Kenton-on-Sea.
The news was disturbing – we were racing to get images of a Rhino being poached of its horns. One almost gets used to this, realizing that almost one animal a day was poached in South Africa during 2010.
But, this assignment was different and set to shake up everyone’s views of just how callous poachers can be. The shock of this assignment will reverberate worldwide and the shock will last for a very long time.
The difference here; “This Rhino was alive!”
It was most likely darted and poached during the early morning hours of Friday, 11th February 2011. The wounded Rhino was discovered by one of the Kariega Reserve Game Rangers early on Friday Morning.
It apparently awoke out of the poachers supposedly deadly drug mix to bear mute and horrific witness to an ongoing “murder” saga.
The absolute unscrupulousness act by these poachers in hacking off a rhino’s horns with the helpless ‘sleeping’ Rhino still breathing and bleeding, possibly flicking its legs and shaking it’s head in a pathetic attempt to escape the pain and the dull thud and chop of axe and panga mercilessly cutting through flesh and bone down to the skull of the still breathing animal.
Then with the bloodied horns finally off the callous savage poachers flee the scene.
Later the Rhino awakes and stumbles into it’s last day on earth – blood pouring out of fresh wounds, holes gaping in it’s snout, hacked upper lips flapping in the breeze, salty blood taste in it’s mouth, dizzy and screaming with pain.
Is the Rhino possibly asking itself why?
Why has mankind let him down in such a manner? Who broke the trust? Why the horn? Why did they not kill him first? Who is going to pay for this atrocity?
Grassing and feeding for more than 3 years on Kariega, the Rhino has never associated humans with pain and fear. How sad that this Rhino had to die an agonising death knowing that trust and humans don’t go together.
The pictures speak for themselves, can you imagine the trauma and pain this animal and hundreds of others have gone through to satisfy the insatiable need for an apparent aphrodisiac?
The historical note in our history books with regards to the last standing rhino could well state: Extinct (due to human greed and ignorance).
This Kariega Rhino broke through the pain and drugs to lurch out of the bush, stand mute and tell us how cruel and unscrupulous we humans are.
Ocean Messengers is appealing to all people who have a conscience and a heart to help stop this crises.
Join the fight for nature and contact Ocean Messengers at : ocean.messengers@gmail.com
Footage of the live Rhino will air soon. We will keep you posted and pay tribute to the extraordinary pain and suffering this Rhino went through, so it will help STOP poaching once and forever!
