Pooches v poachers

THE stench of rotting flesh hangs heavy over the half-eaten carcass of a rhino, killed by poachers who hacked off its horns and left the rest to the lions. Barricade tape marks out the gruesome discovery in the South African bush: this is a crime scene. Two young women search for bullet fragments and casings with a metal detector, and use a chef’s knife to cut away tissue samples and a toenail. The evidence is bagged and carefully logged in a database. It is grim work but these women, wildlife crime investigators with the South African parks service, are used to it.

Kruger National Park was home to 826 of the 1,175 rhinos killed last year in South Africa. This was a slight dip from 2014, but the number of rhinos killed by poachers increased in neighbouring Namibia and Zimbabwe. Overall, 2015 saw the most rhinos killed since the poaching crisis began nearly a decade ago, fuelled by demand from Vietnam and China, where many people wrongly believe it will cure everything from hangovers to cancer.