by Evan Antin
Bearing Witness
After the extreme high of being involved in the horn-trim operation, I was unprepared for the devastating low that would follow. My host and Rhino 911’s cofounder, Nico Jacobs, got a call from nearby Pilanesberg National Park, informing him of a possible poaching underway. Rhino 911’s name isn’t just lip service—it truly is the unit many private owners and government facilities turn to when there’s a rhino emergency unfolding. We left immediately, knowing we were racing against the clock.
I wish I could say we got there in time to give an assist to the rangers, but that’s not how it played out. We were too late. The poachers had been detected, and the park’s anti-poaching unit had responded in force, but by the time the rangers and their dogs scared these criminals off, there were two victims lying along a park roadside.
It’s part of my everyday job description to be immune to the sight of blood. It’s part of the job to be able to stay strong in the face of an animal’s emergency or suffering or tragedy so that I can render whatever treatment or assistance is available. It takes a lot to shake me. But the sight of the two rhinos that died that day is something I’ve carried with me. It depicted one of the most merciless acts I’ve ever seen. And it was all so completely pointless.
The two rhinos, mother and calf, were stretched out, side by side, along the edge of a dirt park road. From a distance, they looked like they might have been sleeping, with the mother spooned behind her baby, belly to back, her head tucked down protectively, her right front leg resting on the smaller rhino’s shoulder. It looked like a cuddle, but it was so much more sinister.
Both rhinos had been shot, and as I neared the bodies, I could see shallow cut marks around the mother’s horn, although it was still intact. The poachers must have thought they were minutes away from a huge score, only the area they’d chosen for their attack was wide open—no trees or high brush to duck into for cover—so the clock had been ticking for them, too. With an armed security team approaching, dogs circling the area, and the sound of a helicopter in the distance, the poachers had fled without getting what they’d come for. Since these poachers were expected to return home with horns and wouldn’t, they were undoubtedly already plotting their next attack.
The aftermath, on that low, clear stretch of scrubby grassland, was that two innocent animals of an endangered species, who’d been living within the borders of a protected national park, had lost their lives for absolutely nothing. (We would later learn that the mother was pregnant with a female baby, meaning the world lost not two but potentially three southern white rhinos that morning.)
I was trying to maintain the demeanor of a professional, a veterinarian, a world traveler who has seen the devastating impacts of poaching more times than I can count. But inside I felt the way I might have if I’d faced this moment when I was about ten—an age when sadness and rage get all jumbled up and you can’t decide if you want to scream or cry or strangle somebody. Standing over the bodies of those rhinos, I wanted to do all of that, and I could barely keep my emotions in check.
The only thing that made it possible for me to show restraint was looking around and seeing the members of the park’s anti-poaching unit—the highly trained, deeply committed badass rangers who put their lives on the line every time they button up the uniform. While I was basically just passing through this place, this was their reality, the senseless destruction and depravity they have to deal with all the time. This team was working 365 days a year to keep their wildlife safe, and in that instance, their relentless efforts had come up short by a matter of minutes. Later that day, they’d be back in the war to protect the park’s rhinos, but at that moment their faces were contorted with fury and grief. Admirably, they never showed those emotions in the field, and if they could keep it together, I had no choice but to swallow everything I was feeling, too. I decided to channel my anger and sorrow into something useful—like helping to let the rest of the world know, through my social media accounts, that two more of the last rhinos on the planet were dead and that the rest of them need our protection to survive.
Chubby Giant Unicorns
After witnessing that heartbreaking scene at Pilanesberg, I thought I’d encountered the full range of experience the fight to save South Africa’s rhinos had to offer; I couldn’t have been more wrong. Just when I thought I’d ridden that emotional wave as high and low and hard as it could go, the Rhino 911 team took me to meet the orphans.
One of the reasons Rhino 911 hustles to the scene of any new poaching, even if the rhino in question is already dead, is that if the victim is a female, there’s a good chance there’s a calf somewhere nearby, hiding in the brush, or lying on the ground, or, later, standing beside its mother’s body trying to understand why she doesn’t respond or why she’s not letting down milk. If a juvenile interferes with the poachers, they will almost always kill it (or at least try to—I’ve seen plenty of orphans with machete wounds); but if it runs away (and if it doesn’t have a horn), they won’t waste their time chasing it. Mother rhinos are pregnant for about eighteen months, and when they give birth, they are typically doting, engaged moms. A calf will stay with its mom for up to three years, and during that time, she doesn’t just feed her baby—she teaches it, plays with it, snuggles with it, and keeps in steady physical and emotional contact. The baby depends not only on its mother’s milk but also on her protection and guidance. It’s a surprisingly close and dynamic relationship, and it’s the reason these babies need to be rescued and protected until they’re old enough to make it on their own.
Cue the Rhino Pride Foundation’s orphanage, where as many as forty rhino youngsters (and sometimes rhinos injured during attempted poachings) get the TLC they need. At the orphanage, volunteers start the rescue process by making sure these babies are nourished properly. To do that, they feed them a milk substitute initially formulated for one of the rhino’s closest relatives: the horse. If you’re wondering just how much milk these babies need to grow, the answer is So Much. Between six months and eighteen months of age, a typical rescued rhino orphan will be bottle-fed about four liters of milk per feeding—four or five times per day. That’s a minimum of sixteen liters of hand-mixed, hand-fed formula every day for every animal. It says something about the devotion of the caregivers that they make this happen for these kiddos twenty-four/seven.
Orphanages also provide veterinary care, and one of the surprisingly common needs these juveniles have is antacid medication. They may seem too big to be vulnerable to minor ailments, but rhinos are prone to stress-related stomach issues, and since almost all the juveniles at the orphanage have lost their mothers—often having witnessed the murder and sometimes even having been injured during it—they carry a lot of anxiety; this can manifest itself in the form of gastrointestinal ulcers, which can easily be fatal. Just thinking about these giant, chubby unicorn babies suffering from bleeding ulcers infuriates me, but it is one of the realities their caretakers have to deal with.
Thankfully, when the babies are rescued, they quickly learn that they can find some of the contact they crave—getting their ears scratched or their bellies rubbed or their bottoms patted—from their loving keepers. And the next most effective stress-reducing “medication” for these animals is pairing them up with a friend. Although this is typically another rhino, over the last few years I’ve seen juvenile rhinos become besties with goats, sheep, horses, and even dogs.
At Rhino Pride, both black and white rhino babies are being raised together. These animals share more DNA with horses and tapirs than with other species, but if you spend any time observing them, you’ve got to wonder what other factor is part of the equation. Black rhinos can have a strong aggressive streak. You don’t want to mess with them. White rhinos? Not so much. Of course, they’ll defend themselves if cornered or protecting their young, but generally these are mellow, tolerant, forgiving animals. Even when they’re intimidated, they’re more likely to form a little group and back up butt to butt to create
a defensive line than they are to charge. The only time you can expect these creatures to be aggressive is when two males are competing over something, especially a female. When that happens, all bets are off and things can get ugly—even deadly.
When they’re juveniles, this trend toward gentleness makes the “little” rhinos offer up the kinds of behaviors you might expect from something much tamer, like a dog. One of the first rhinos I met at the orphanage leaned so heavily into my leg, he basically gave me no choice but to pet him. Another, who’d been injured in the slaughter that killed her mother, rubbed her head up and down against me, nuzzling in close. I fed a rhino named Tommy four big bottles—leaving me to wonder whether you’re supposed to burp a rhino baby. When his belly was full, he flopped over on the ground, pushing his head against me and letting out a long, satisfied-baby sigh. I could have sat beside that sweet, giant lump of a baby all day, just rubbing his ears and patting his face while he blinked up at me in thanks.
The goal of these orphanages is to raise the rhinos until they’re sufficiently independent to live on protected lands in the wild; in the meantime, they’re getting as much love, support, and kindness as their rescuers can offer. Everybody involved knows there’s nothing we can do that’s truly a substitute for these babies being raised by their mothers, but that doesn’t stop the conservationists from striving every day to offer the next best thing.
Full-Moon Heartache
A lot of my experiences in South Africa have stuck with me, and they’re part of the reason I’ve been back several times since that first visit. I offer a veterinary assist when I can, and bring as much publicity as possible to the organizations that are fighting every day to save the rhinos. On my first visit—my first day, actually—one of the rangers told me something that has stuck with me ever since. It was an overcast morning, and we were talking about the provisions the landowner had in place for nighttime security. The ranger looked around and nodded, assuring me that the rhinos were as safe as they could possibly be for the night. Then he told me that dark nights aren’t the ones he worries most about. “It is the poachers’ moon,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “That’s the one we hate to see coming.”
The poachers’ moon? What the hell was that?
Turns out, it’s the mysterious, sometimes spooky, sometimes romantic thing most of us call a full moon. I used to love full moons and even thought they had a little bit of a call-to-the-wild effect on me. But now I know that poachers love them, too. Offering the equivalent of dim stadium lighting over the bush, a full moon provides a perfect opportunity to steal onto protected property and savage the rhino population while South Africa sleeps. Factor in that some of these poachers even charge a premium for a rhino horn acquired during a full moon because it’s supposedly imbued with extra-strong powers, and you’ve got all the makings of a disaster. During a supermoon in September 2015, eight rhinos were killed in a single night in a single park. During a full moon in May 2017, another nine lost their lives. Rangers know these nights are coming, but even with staffing up and prepping to the best of their ability, they simply don’t have the manpower or the resources to protect all the rhinos who unknowingly rely on them to stay safe.
10
Uganda
I’ve seen the biggest waterfalls in the world—including Victoria Falls in Zambia and Iguazu Falls in Brazil—but I’ve never seen a display of water as aggressive as the one at Uganda’s Murchison Falls. To create the falls, the three-hundred-foot-wide Victoria Nile grudgingly funnels itself until it’s narrow enough to thunder through a twenty-three-foot-wide stone gap, after which it rockets down 145 feet with a world of pent-up force behind it. Ugandans sometimes describe the falls as a war between rock and water, and when you see and hear eleven thousand cubic feet of river per second slamming through this pass, it’s hard to believe that the rock has held its own for so long. God forbid you ever went over: those falls would kill you three or four times before you hit bottom. And once you reached the placid water beyond the base, you’d likely be consumed by the gnarly Nile crocodiles that bask in the sun on the banks below the falls. These guys deserve a wide berth in the water and on land, as they weigh in as heavy as a ton and are known man-eaters.
Standing at the top of those falls after a trip that took me from California to Illinois, Illinois to Belgium, Belgium to Rwanda, and finally Rwanda to Uganda was the perfect antidote for my jet lag. It’s a place where you can truly feel alive.
Blast from the Past
The first time I traveled to East Africa, I was barely an adult, and every new encounter blew my mind and increased my fascination with the place. The semester I spent in Tanzania as an undergrad was a game changer in my life—cementing my desire to travel, work with animals, and document my adventures. In late October 2019, I traveled back to the region on my first-ever trip to Uganda. I’d visited several countries in Africa by then, but this trip brought me back to the quintessential East African landscape of broad lowland savannah dotted with wooded copses, all of it super green in the wet season. Seeing that distinctive natural beauty felt like a trip back to a favorite memory. This time, though, instead of being a kid taking my first safari, I was there to help with the process of translocating a small group of young giraffes so they could become a new seed population in a protected national preserve. One of my conservation heroes, Ivan Carter, who co-runs the Ivan Carter Wildlife Conservation Alliance, had invited me to come lend a hand as the Giraffe Conservation Foundation worked with Ugandan authorities to tackle the daunting task.
I’d never moved a giraffe before—most people, even veterinarians and conservationists, never do—but I knew a little about the logistics. By any measure the job was going to be monumental, complicated, and infinitely challenging. By the time my five days of work were through, I expected, the process would have kicked my ass, physically and mentally, but that didn’t matter—I was just eager to be part of such a huge, potentially game-changing mission.
Robo-Dino-Bird
Of course, no great road trip goes in a straight line, and on my way to meeting the giraffe-translocation team, I had another stop I was excited about. The Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre in Entebbe is an animal sanctuary that does amazing work in its community, and it just happens to be home to an animal that’s always been on my bucket list to meet: the shoe-billed stork. These birds are actually in the pelican family and are among the coolest, craziest birds in the world. An aquatic carnivore, the shoebill looks like a mix of dinosaur, robot, and Muppet, with a humongous gray head, wide yellow eyes, a sloping beak ending in a curved hook, and wings that could come straight out of a field guide to dinosaurs (check out the pterodactyl). We don’t know if they’re actually prehistoric, but these birds are definitely ancient, with records of them going as far back as ancient Egypt. At an average of five feet tall with an eight-foot wingspan, they’re physically intimidating. Plus, they’re so dinosaurish they look like they’ve been walking the earth for eons—the kind of creature you instinctively know to regard with a healthy respect.
The shoebill I met at the Education Centre is named Sushi. He’s a quirky, intelligent bird—one with surprisingly polite manners when it comes to people. He bows his head toward newcomers, and if you bow back and are patient, he might let you get close to him. In the wild, you’d likely never manage to approach a bird like this (and if you did, you’d regret it if the shoebill decided to lay down the law). Pelicans and other long-billed aquatic birds can be extremely dangerous, especially because one of their first defenses is to peck at the eyes of anything they deem to be a threat. I’ve worked with aquatic birds and pelicans in wildlife rescues, and for the big ones you have to wear full face masks. When I met Sushi, I knew he had come to the Education Centre decades ago as a rescue and had gotten comfortable with people. Based on his reputation, it was unlikely he’d go for my eyeballs, but I intentionally kept a little distance between my face and his beak at first. As expected, he turned out to be 100 perce
nt agreeable and showed zero signs of aggressive behavior. This is a special bird who’s become an effective ambassador for his species, inspiring people to learn about, respect, and even protect these rare creatures.
In the wild, birds like Sushi are deadly hunters. They wait for their prey, standing motionless in shallow water for as long as it takes for a meal to come to them. When it happens, the stork snaps up the fish, rodent, turtle, or even smallish monitor or croc in his huge beak, pulls its head off with the bill’s sharp edge, and swallows the rest of it whole. Knowing that, I took my time approaching Sushi, and he rewarded me with one of the coolest greetings in the bird world—clattering the top and bottom of his bill together in a unique pop-pop-pop-pop-pop that sounded like a large wooden box being rapidly and repetitively opened and slammed shut. Lots of long-billed birds make this sound, but in smaller species it’s more of a pip-pip-pip. With a big bill like Sushi’s, the deep, hollow beak clacking stops you in your tracks—at least until you’re sure it’s a friendly sound and not an angry one.
Despite the fact that shoebill storks have few natural enemies, their numbers are down because they’re often poached for rare bird collectors. Since they lay just an egg or two at a time, their population continues to fall year after year. At this writing, it’s estimated that there are fewer than five thousand of these rare and vulnerable birds left in the wild.
The day I met Sushi, hundreds of school-age children were at the center, too. I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate the importance of familiarizing kids with their local wildlife and helping them learn to respect it. Believe it or not, most children in most regions of Africa have never seen a rhino or a giraffe, an elephant or a lion in person, and many come from communities that think of these iconic African animals as “pests” that interfere with agriculture and land management. Wildlife sanctuaries and rehabilitation centers that welcome kids give them great reasons to appreciate these iconic animals as valuable parts of their communities. Imagine if every adult who’s poaching vulnerable and endangered species today had this kind of opportunity to learn about (and learn to respect) animals as a child.
