Dear user,  I’m sorry, I have no right to beam this image into your personal space. Sadly I have seen many far worse.

We have a war going on; in the immediate vicinity of Hoedspruit in less than a week we have had four butchered, and all in the most savage, inhuman of ways. Not for the pot, solely for the horn, this is just hacked off with an axe, sometimes leaving a blinded, brutalised in excruciating agony a mother and her baby.

Of course you share my outrage; but when I saw them I saw red; I know those rhino. I see and live with those rhino, which for all their bulk and power are relatively defenceless, have atrocious sight and rely on us for protection.

Sixty years ago they were all but eliminated, but thanks to the work of many their numbers have been built back up to today’s levels – yet at the present rate of extermination, all for the sake of the belief by pathetic elderly Chinese and Vietnamese soft-willied bastards, who are seeking one last erection to validate their pathetic lives these giants of our bush are butchered.

We all need to get angry; we all need to apply whatever pressure we can to attack this evil; I don’t wish my children’s children to be denied the rich natural heritage we enjoy.

We need to protect our rhino – and I use “our” advisedly, our natural heritage belongs to us all, all over the World; all our lives are enriched by knowing that they are there, even if we only see them on a David Attenborough TV special.

Here is South Africa we are proud of our “Big 5”. Imagine having to mumble, well actually it’s the Big 4, or worse the Big 3, or “We used to have the Big 5” – even if you only evaluate this in human terms, think of the decimation of our tourist industry and tens of thousands now unemployed.

We need to mobilise. We need feet and resources on the ground to defend rhino. We need pressure to be brought on the supply chain that takes these horns out of South Africa and into Asia. Officialdom must be complicit; we need to pressure our politicians to take action and we need to ensure that the global outrage echoes up and into China and we can force that country to root out the demand.

We need to organise and mobilise mounted patrols, get helicopters involved, enable rangers to be armed. We need to spread the word; the World needs to get angry. We must stop this happening.

Tags: #Big 5, #Chinese, #Rhino, #South Africa