My good friend and Zimbabwean PH Nigel Theisen and I recently spent some time in the Bubye Valley Conservancy just getting oriented there as he will begin a full book of safaris in the conservancy in 2016 with a partial book later this year.

While we were there...we had the luxury of spending a lot of time with Norman English...long-time Rhodesian/Zimbabwean Game Ranger who has been one the leaders in preserving the wild black rhino.

Norman demonstrated how serious the poaching situation remained...even in a place as well guarded as the BVC.



Blondie Leathem (the manager of hunting for BVC) had told us that another PH had found a dead rhino carcass that still had the horn on it and that Norm was going to do a necropsy to see what had likely killed it. Since the horn was there...poaching was lower on the list although both Blondie and Norm had said the perimeter is constantly under attack.

The first evening we were there...Norm shows up after dinner to sit and visit with Nigel at the campfire...Nigel had not told me...but he and Norm had grown up together in Kwe Kwe (Que Que) and had been together during the early rhino wars in Chete...Nigel as a PH an Norm as a ranger. Great stories were told that night in Nengo camp of the BVC.

The next morning we head out to the carcass after meeting Norm at his house where he showed us the horn and told us their records showed this was a 17 year old bull.



This is what we found.















From all of these scars...we had hope that the old boy had died of natural causes...especially since the horn was still there.

So we set about the forensic examination.



Due to the primary interest in poaching...Norm always takes a metal detector to search for a bullet.





Sure enough when going through the ingesta we got a loud ping on the metal detector.



An old military fmj .303 bullet.

There are less than 1000 wild black rhino left...BVC has the bulk of them...even in this highly guarded and fenced conservancy...they are still not safe.

Story to be continued....

Just returned from the BVC. Hunted out of the Samayangan camp. Our group of four hunters had regular encounters with both black and white rhino. Having hunted in their historic range in Chewore where they no longer exist, I was anxious to see one in the wild. It was like going back in time. We were stalking a small herd of eland bulls when they suddenly bolted. To our right a male and female rhino 50 yards away pushed through the thorn brush. We backed off down wind to let them pass. One magnificent encounter. Like being on a time machine pushed back 50 years. My PH friend Andy Hunter has shared many stories regarding the plight of black rhino in the lower Zambezi Valley. A sad story it is. The conservancy is doing a fantastic job and this is a good example of how our hunting dollars make a difference for all creatures large and small.

LB,
You are 100% correct. Andy and Nigel are good friends and both are good friends of Norman English and Raoul du Toit and were present for the beginning of the rhino wars back in the 80's.

These rhino in the BVC are descendants of the Zambezi Valley rhino where in the '80's they were thick in places like Chewore.

Many people think all rhino are resistant to trypanosomes (African Sleeping Sickness) but they are not. These rhino, descending from the lower Zambezi herd, may carry the last genes for trypanosomiasis resistance in wild rhino.

It is sad that a world treasure like this in a place as well managed as BVC is under threat from hired assassins/poachers.

The BVC is still a business however and hunter's dollars are the only thing that keep these rhino alive. Even so...Norman is still under-staffed for game-rangers. The BVC is a BIG place and one ranger/250 sq km ON ACTIVE PATROL is needed to guard these rhino due to the constant pressure they are under.

Lane,
Thanks for the piece and pix, plus your many other contributions to AR. Our knowledge of poaching is built with bricks like these.

Brice,
Thank you sir for the kind words.

thank you for the post...

Rich,
You are welcome and thank you for the kind words!

I am confused about the rhino situation. My understanding is that the rhino has no real value other than horn and if numbers allowed it, trophy hunting. Why aren't all the living rhinos darted and dehorned. Is their something about hornless rhinos that alters their breeding habits or causes some other type of problem? If the dehorning were well publicized it might damage the black market because buyers would expect fake rhino horn or poachers would believe that there were literally no rhino horns left to get. Can someone explain why this is not being done? If the object is to increase rhino numbers it really wouldn't matter if the breeders had horns or not. MMP

Dehorning is being done and it does help...but...you cannot cut the base off as it is live tissue. While not as valuable as a whole horn...it still is quite valuable to poacher.

They will kill one for the nub.

But dehorning is being used.

However, it has to be repeated as the horn grows back, it is very expensive to accomplish, it helps...but does not stop poaching completely merely slows it a bit.

Thank you for sharing this post and my admiration for Mr. Theisen for all his hard work.
There's a CNN article/video on that website today about rhino poaching in Kruger and a few seconds of it was of a rhino 1/2 alive with it's horn hacked off--one of those images you wish you never saw.

Lane: I was on Safari when you posted this in June and had not seen it. Thanks for the information!