A South African game park's effort to save a rhino from poachers ended up taking its life.
The Rhino and Lion reserve, north of Johannesburg, has resorted to extreme measures to stop poachers killing rhinos for their horns and selling them as a scientifically baseless dream cure for cancer.
However, Spencer the rhino died when he was administered the drug to wake him up at the end of one such procedure this week.
A large contingent of media was invited to see the procedure that was developed by the Rhino Rescue Project and intended to deter poachers from killing the animals to sell their horns.
The procedure normally takes about one hour and involves drilling a hole in the rhino's horn and then infusing it with a special compound of depot ectoparasiticides and an indelible pink dye.
Ectoparasiticides are over the counter drugs normally used to treat parasites in animals. The pink dye is visible when put through an x-ray machine. Any horn or horn powder containing the dye can therefore be picked up by airport scanners and seized by the authorities.
The rhinos also have microchips inserted and a GPS and radio tracking device. The tracking device means the rhino can be monitored at all times and, if the horn is removed, it can easily be traced.
A full DNA sample is taken from the treated animals – enabling the found horns to be traced back to the original de-horned rhino.
The rhino is put under anaesthetic to minimise the pain and discomfort, but the noise of the drilling can cause some distress. Lorinda Hern, spokeswoman for the Lion and Rhino Park, said Spencer was actually doing fine during the procedure despite his shaking and grunting.
"The reason they shake and shiver a bit like that when they are under anaesthetic is because he can hear us, so he knows something is happening but he can't do anything about it" explained Hern.
The technique was developed by Dr Charles van Niekerk and is designed to make the horns unusable by poachers involved in the illegal, multi-million dollar business of selling horns. The horns are ground down into a powder and sold to cure a multitude of ailments including cancer - beliefs that have no basis in science.
The dye marks the horn and deters those who cut it down to make ornamental objects or daggers that are often sold in the Middle East. Yemen prizes rhino horn daggers.
Although the compound will not kill, it will make anyone who consumes the ground-up horn feel sick.
"Although not lethal in small quantities, they are extremely toxic, and symptoms of accidental ingestion may include, but a are not limited to, severe nausea, vomiting, convulsions and, in extreme cases, nervous symptoms," stated the The Rhino Rescue Project.
However, on this occasion the horn poisoning procedure proved lethal for the 30-year-old rhino Spencer.
Hern said she believed it was due to the drug injected to wake the rhino up that caused him to have a heart attack.
She was quoted by a local paper as saying anaesthetising large animals always carries a risk. She added that poachers had created a catch-22 situation in that poaching prevention treatments required sedation, which could in some cases pose a risk to the animals.
A post mortem is being conducted to establish the exact cause of the rhino's death.
The project says the horn poisoning scheme has been widely publicised so consumers are made aware of the risk of ingesting the rhino horn powder.
In addition, because the compound is a pesticide, it should benefit the rhino in preventing pest infestation and related diseases.
The compound has a four-year life span after which time the horns need to be re-infused.
However, the project leaders say this method is only meant to be a stop gap until better deterrence measures are developed. The Rhino Rescue Project says the infusion procedure helps them to "buy time while a long-term solution is being researched".
A record number of rhinos were poached last year in South Africa, which is home to the greatest number of the animals. Rising demand in Asia for their horns has led to increased killings of the threatened species.
The country's national park service and conservationists say at least 443 rhinos were killed in South Africa in 2011, which is up from 333 the previous year.
The street value of rhinoceros horns has soared to about NZ$78,000 a kilogram - making it more expensive than gold, platinum and in many cases cocaine.
South Africa, home to more than 20,000 rhinos, was losing about 15 animals a year a decade ago. But poaching increased dramatically from about 2007 as a growing affluent class in places such as Vietnam and Thailand began spending more on rhino horn for traditional medicine.
The number of rhinoceroses dying unnatural deaths in South Africa, either through illegal poaching or legal hunts, has reached a level likely to lead to population decline, according to a study by Richard Emslie, an expert in the field.
The Rhino Rescue Project hopes the treatment will cut poaching by 100 percent.
3 News / Reuters