Rhino facts

There are five rhino species: White & Black rhinos from Africa; Greater one-horned, Sumatran; and the Javan Rhino. Around 98% of Africa’s rhinos are found in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

The southern white rhino sub-species is the only conservation success story. It has been helped to get numbers back from under 100 in 1895 to over 20,000 in the wild today. earlier successful relocations across Africa, the black rhino population is above 5,000.

But with greedy poachers willing to take greater risks, despite tougher prison sentences, the battle is far from over in Kenya.

“This has taken a lot of planning because we want to be one step ahead,” Martin told me in Tsavo, which is the size of Northern Ireland.

Nothing was taken for granted during the operation we witnessed.

We were in the helicopter as the pilot hovered over Jack about 10 metres below and then a vet expertly fired the dart into his thick hide.

Within 10 minutes, Jack was on the ground and all-terrain vehicles arrived to prepare him for the journey ahead.

While one vet doused its wounds in antiseptic, two others drilled a deep hole in its horn and inserted a microchip and a transmitter device.

The transmitter would have enabled the rangers at Tsavo to detect the rhino’s movements and the chip would have helped prosecute poachers caught with the horn.

The still slumbering rhino was then strapped up as a large crate was lowered just in front of its head.

Eleven strong men held it down just in case it kicked out. Then, with a low groaning noise, it surged forward into the crate in a sudden burst of energy.

Once the crate was firmly shut, a hydraulic arm lifted it on to a flat-bed truck and it was taken to Tsavo.

Translocations to the remote 10,000 hectare sanctuary, which is surrounded by an electric fence and has sensors to detect poachers, have been suspended after Friday’s awful news. But Martin and his colleagues at WWF still aim to increase the numbers there to 100.

Once this has happened the fences can come down and the rhinos can roam the plains as they used to.

Because even through this operation went wrong, the blame does not lie with the conservationists.

The blood is on the hands of the poachers, the horn smugglers and the buyers in the Far East. Without them, there would have been no need to uproot poor Jack and Mwanahamisi.