Word: rhino
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...desert floor -- not surprising since he spent his first 40 years in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a wildlife biologist and tracker. "I slept on the ground most of my life," he told me. "No tent. Only a tarpaulin in case it rained. One night I woke up with a rhino sniffing my body. I just lay quietly. Another time I found a lion had eaten a whole cow next to me while I lay sleeping." He looks at his students and instructors, then out across the dry landscape. "Over 223 million acres have suffered from severe desertification, and more...
Meanwhile, Zimbabwean rangers have been capturing Zambezi Valley rhinos and moving them away from the war zone. Since 1984 the teams have relocated nearly 240 animals to safer game reserves and fenced-in ranches. On one recent morning, Warden Clem Coetsee, head of the capture unit, set out with his men to bag their 75th rhino of the three-month dry-weather capturing season. Armed with a heavy darting rifle loaded with nerve-blocking tranquilizer, he spotted a rhino cow, moved into range and took careful aim. The dart hit the beast's shoulder with a thwack. She snorted...
...rolled onto sleds, hoisted with ropes into a truck and transferred into stockade-like holding pens. Sometimes they revive unexpectedly; last year Coetsee was gored in the leg. But most can be hand fed in the holding pens within a few days. And rhino calves, Coetsee reports, like to be tickled...
What if the Zambezi Valley proves to be the rhino's Little Big Horn? Conservationists fear that more is at stake than the possible extinction of a fascinating relic of animal antiquity. "The rhino is a symbol of all endangered wildlife," says Chief Warden Tatham. "If we lose the rhino, will the elephant be next? And after the elephants are gone, will we lose the rest of the game? This is a war we simply must...
Zimbabwe has launched a last- ditch war to save the black rhinoceros and shut down an illicit trade in rhino horns...