Signs of hope for rare rhino
The rhino’s rescuers gave her a name: Hope. Poachers in South Africa had tranquillised the rhino and hacked off her horns while she was sedated, leaving the animal with a horrific wound covering much of her face. A couple of days later, staff on a wildlife reserve found the grievously injured rhino — alive. Last week, veterinarians operated on the 4-year-old female, a rare survivor of increasing attacks by poachers who killed more than 1200 rhinos last year in South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos. They removed maggots and dead tissue, applied dressing and fastened a fibreglass cast with steel screws. The wound measures 50cm by 28 cm, the biggest of 10 similar cases that the team has treated in the past three years. “If we can save Hope and she can go back and produce more offspring, then in her lifetime she would have contributed to the survival of the species,” said Dr Gerhard Steenkamp, a vet from the University of Pretoria. He is a member of Saving the Survivors, a South African group that treats rhinos with gunshot wounds, facial gouges and other injuries inflicted by poachers. Hope was attacked in Lombardini, a wildlife reserve in Eastern Cape province where several rhinos were poached recently. Hope’s nasal bone was badly fractured and part was removed, exposing the sinus cavities and nasal passage. It could take at least a year for Hope’s wound to heal after multiple treatments, Steenkamp said. It cost US$75,000 ($102,595) to treat Lion’s Den, a rhino with a similar injury, and Thandi, whose horns were hacked off in 2012. Spokeswoman Suzanne Boswell Rudham said of Hope: “She’s doing really well.”