[engine whirs] [serene music] [serene music] [dramatic music] [dramatic music continues] - This ludicrous hat rack made of rhinoceros horn represents a natural tragedy of appalling proportions.

In the last 15 years or so, most of the world's wild rhino population has been wiped out, the animals killed for their horns and hides to supply illegal markets in the Near and Far East.

Hi, I'm George Page For Nature.

Ground into a powder, this hat rack could bring about $7,000 per pound.

The horns weigh about six pounds and so are worth close to $42,000 on the black market.

A single rhino hide can fetch more than 20,000.

Why is it so valuable?

Many Asians consider powdered rhino horn and hide a cure for all sorts of ailments.

Others swear the horn is an aphrodisiac.

There's absolutely no scientific evidence that any of this is true, but because of its value, the great rhinoceros has become one of the Earth's most endangered creatures.

Why should we care?

Well, among many reasons, the rhino is a living link to pre-history.

It's been roaming our planet for some 60 million years, 600,000 centuries, long before the dawn of man.

Conservationists feel that alone is enough reason to care to ensure that the rhino does not disappear in this century or the next.

[birds chirp] [fly buzzes] [rhino snorts] [birds chirp] [birds chirp] Of the world's five species of rhinoceros, all but one are in danger of extinction.

[bird cries] This is the black rhino.

In 1970, there were at least 65,000 of them.

Today, there are barely 8,000.

This tragic loss of one of the Earth's most ancient inhabitants has been caused almost entirely by killing to satisfy the lucrative trade in rhino horn.

Once common, throughout much of Africa, in many areas, black rhinos have virtually disappeared.

The Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya.

At first sight, it's little different from the primeval vision of Africa, limitless plains teeming with wildlife.

But one ancient inhabitant almost entirely missing is the rhino.

[animals chirp] Just a few years ago, rhinos were so common here, they scarcely rated a second glance.

Now, poaching for their horns has reduced their numbers to fewer than 30.

[patrolmen converse in foreign language] The rhinos have become so scarce that all of them can be identified as individuals in a slim photo album.

[patrolmen converse in foreign language] The government's anti-poaching unit mounts regular patrols to keep keep track of the few survivors.

The patrols are some deterrent to poachers, but it's a losing battle.

The reserve has only a handful of men.

In the Rhino patrol, there are just six to guard over 540 square miles of country.

Their vehicles are old, few, and unreliable.

[engine starts] And there's little money for spare parts when they break down.

[engine stalls] [patrolman speaks in foreign language] [engine stalls] With the Land Rovers out of action, protecting the few remaining rhinos becomes not just difficult, but impossible.

[engine stalls] [animal croaks] [flies buzz] One more rhino dead, one more corpse left to rot in the sun.

All that's been taken is the horn.

[flies buzz] [patrolmen converse in foreign language] [patrolmen continue conversing in foreign language] [flies buzz] The photos come out again, but this time, to record the dead, not the living.

The luckless Fatuma becomes just another statistic.

But what will become of the horn?

[patrolmen converse in foreign language] For centuries, the Far East has been the largest market for rhino horn.

This one is in a shop window in Hong Kong.

The horn's main use is not as an aphrodisiac.

More often, it's prescribed as a medicine for lowering fever.

[shopkeeper and customer converse in foreign language] [shopkeeper and customer converse in foreign language] Traditional Chinese medicine shops like this used to get their supply of horn from Asian rhinos, but the Asian species has become so rare that much of the horn now comes from Africa.

It's so precious that only a small scraping is prescribed at a time.

The patient will mix it with boiling water and drink it.

Once, Hong Kong was a major importer of rhino horn and of rhino hide, which is also used for medicinal purposes, but only a small proportion was for local use.

Most was sold to buyers from other Asian countries, including China and Japan.

In 1979, the import of rhino horn was officially banned, but selling horn imported before the ban was imposed is still legal.

And since every grain sells for the equivalent of twice its weight in gold, the incentive for smuggling is high.

[shopkeeper speaks in foreign language] Only a fraction of the money goes to the man at the other end of the chain, the poacher back in Africa.

Poaching is so widespread that it's even been suggested that rhinos should have their horns surgically removed to render them unattractive to poachers, but that would leave them unable to defend their calves against predators.

And anyway, the horns would grow again.

Selling a horn from a single rhino can earn the equivalent of two years' legitimate wages.

So whatever the penalties, there'll always be men willing to take the risk of being caught or injured.

So severe are the pressures on Kenya's remaining rhinos that these rare white rhinos in Meru National Park have an armed guard mounted on them 24 hours a day.

[guard speaks in foreign language] The white rhino is the second of the two African species.

They aren't really white.

That's a corruption of the Afrikaans word for wide, referring to their broad square lip.

Unlike the black rhino, they're grazers, not browsers, great, placid, lumbering two-ton lawnmowers.

There are about 3,000 white rhinos left, most of them in Southern Africa.

There was a thriving Northern population, but that's been reduced to less than 100 in Zaire and the Sudan.

These animals in Kenya were imported from South Africa.

Once, there were nine of them, but three were killed by Somali poachers in a single day.

Ever since, the six survivors have been guarded throughout the day and driven back to a secure stockade for the night.

There are probably too few of them to ever become the nucleus of the new breeding population.

[animals chirp] [animal chirping continues] [guards converse in foreign language] [animals chirp] It may be twilight for the rhino in Kenya, but here in South Africa, there's a new dawn.

The Southern white rhino was virtually extinct at the turn of this century.

Hunting had reduced it to about two dozen animals.

But since then, effective protection has allowed the numbers to increase.

Unlike their East African counterpart, the South African parks department is not short of money, men, or resources.

The national parks are totally fenced and enclosed and effectively patrolled.

The protection has been so successful that there's now a surplus of white rhinos.

In the Umfolozi Game Reserve, for instance, the numbers rose so high that the rhinos were beginning to damage their habitat.

The main problem for the parks department here is not stopping poaching.

It's preventing overpopulation.

[engine whirs] [engine whirring continues] [engine whirring continues] - We've seen quite a lot of rhinos.

There is about 25 or 30 that have come out of here.

And I think if you can go up this road here and we'll meet you up at the top here, we'll try and get these animals down off the ridge here.

- Any big bulls.

- Yeah, there's one or two big bulls up there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- Okay, we'll be off.

[Rodney speaks in foreign language] [car engine whirs] [helicopter engine whirs] [helicopter engine whirring continues] [car engine whirs] - We approach left.

[speaks in foreign languagE] [helicopter engine whirs] [siren blares] [siren blaring continues] [siren blaring continues] [siren blaring continues] [siren blaring continues] [siren blaring continues] [siren blaring continues] [helicopter engine whirs] [helicopter engine whirring continues] [helicopter engine whirring continues] [ranger speaks in foreign language] [helicopter engine whirs] [helicopter engine whirring continues] - [George] The rhino was shot with a dart containing a powerful tranquilizer.

The ground team waits until it's safe to approach.

[ranger speaks in foreign language] [helicopter engine whirs] [helicopter engine whirring continues] [car engine whirs] [rhino grunts] [rhino grunts] In Umfolozi, the capture of rhinos has been developed into a fine art.

In the early 1960s, when the catchers first started, the animals were stalked and guarded on foot.

Then they were followed on horseback until they went down.

That could take as much as half an hour.

In that time, they could cover vast distances and get themselves into almost inaccessible places.

Improvements in the drugs mean that today, the rhino goes down in as little as five minutes.

By herding it with a helicopter both before and after darting, it can be steered close to a road where it's easy for the ground team to pick it up.

The stress on the rhino is less.

The whole operation, from darting to loading, can take as little as 25 minutes, and hardly any animals are lost.

[rangers converse in foreign language] [car engine whirs] Though the procedure is highly practiced, it doesn't always go smoothly.

[ranger speaks in foreign language] [ranger continues speaking in foreign language] A lucky man to emerge unharmed from beneath two tons of rhino.

After capture, the rhinos are held in enclosures at the park headquarters.

Rodney Henwood, the game capture officer, explains the reasoning behind the operation.

- We used to have a estimated population of over 2,000 in these parks.

And due to the capture techniques that we've developed, we've managed to reduce this population down to somewhere around a thousand.

And to maintain that population, we have to remove something in the vicinity of a hundred animals per year as they increase at the rate of 10% per annum.

The reason we bring them here is twofold, and the first is that the animals suffer a certain amount of trauma during capture.

So we bring them here to overcome the trauma of being caught.

And the second is to prepare them for the next leg of their journey.

- [George] The next leg of their journey can be unexpectedly final.

- Wait till he turns, okay?

Take him head on.

- [Rodney] In the shoulder.

- So wait till he turns and put it right in the shoulder, slightly back, but not behind the shoulder, in the shoulder but towards the back of the shoulder.

- [Rodney] He's moving a little to the right.

- [Ranger] Yeah, yeah, okay.

- [Rodney] I'm on his shoulder.

[ranger speaks in foreign language] [gun bangs] - [George] For political and economic reasons, there's a problem finding safe places for the surplus rhinos at Umfolozi.

Many are sold to private ranches to be shot by visiting hunters.

[bird cries] [birds chirp] Back in Umfolozi, the rhinos eventually die from natural causes.

Often, the remains are never found, but if they are, the horns are collected.

[rangers converse in foreign language] Although there's a limited local demand for horn used in traditional medicine, the main object is to prevent it reaching the international market.

South Africa is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species called CITES.

It forbids the import and export of products such as rhino horn.

- What is the address possibly?

- Hello, Jen.

- Hello, Keith.

[speaks in foreign language] Hello, Keith.

- [Keith] How are you?

- Fine, thanks, how are you?

- [Keith] Here, I brought you some rhino horns from the Umfolozi Game Reserve.

- Thank you very much.

- [Keith] The animals were found dead in the field.

- [Jen] I suppose you want your-- - [Keith] Yes, give me my piece of paper, please.

- [Jen] Certainly.

- [Keith] And how are things going here?

- [Jen] Fine, thanks, Keith.

- [Keith] It's time you came and visited us sometime.

- [Jen] If we can get out of this place, yes.

- [Keith] Yeah, okay.

Thanks, Jen.

- Thank you very much.

- [Keith] Thanks a lot.

See you again.

- Very nice of you.

- [Keith] Bye.

- Thank you, bye.

[footsteps patter] [locks click open] - [George] A hoard of rhino horns like this would be worth a fortune on the open market.

So what will become of it?

Dr. Hughes of the Natal Parks Board explains the official policy.

- We don't regard rhino horn as anything particularly special.

We never have.

In fact, the Rhino Protection Program has been so successful in Zululand that our staff used to regard rhino horn just as another piece of commodity.

It had no great importance to us.

In fact, many of our staff used to have them propping open doors and literally lying around.

It was only when CITES was enforced and we became signatories to CITES that we decided to exceed the requests of CITES and even stopped selling of horn within South Africa, which is not required under the convention.

We have tried to make as certain as we can that the rhino horn won't go into any form of traffic.

But as far as we ourselves are concerned, the horn itself, we regard it as, it's really more of a nuisance than anything else at the moment.

[chants echo] - [George] Nevertheless, the illegal export of horn from other countries in Africa continues, and about half of it ends up here, across the Red Sea, in the souks of the old city of Sanaa in North Yemen.

[people converse in foreign language] By tradition, every Yemeni man wears an ornate dagger at his waist.

The most highly prized material for the handle has always been rhino horn, but until recently, it was beyond the reach of all but an opulent minority.

Then, in the 1970s, money from Yemenis working in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia began flooding into the country to the tune of $3 million a day.

Suddenly, a rhino horn dagger handle became a realistic aspiration for the average man.

The demand for rhino horn rocketed, and so did the price.

The trade in rhino horn has been investigated by Dr. Esmond Bradley Martin, an American researcher and writer who lives in Kenya.

He estimates that throughout the 1970s, North Yemen was importing at least three tons of horn a year.

A ton of horn is the equivalent of some 350 rhinos, so more than a thousand rhinos a year must have died to satisfy the demand in Yemen.

[people converse in foreign language] - This is about a million, 2 million rials.

- [Esmond] $500,000.

- [Guide] Yes.

- [Esmond] That's unbelievable.

- [Guide] Yeah.

- [Esmond] Why is it so expensive?

Is it old?

- [George] In August 1982, the North Yemen government banned the import of rhino horn, but the trade continues.

Dr. Martin estimates that horn is still coming into the country at a rate of nearly a ton of years.

- For one kilo, they can take the shaving then export it to China and Hong Kong as well.

- [Guide] Oh, yeah.

- [Esmond] So where do you think that piece of horn that we're looking at now had come from?

- [Guide] From East Africa.

- [George] Most of the horn comes in by air, apparently from Khartoum in the Sudan.

The Sudan, too, has banned trade in rhino horn, yet it seems to pass through the country with little hindrance.

Back in Africa, the future for the rhino looks bleak, but paradoxically, one hope for the future may lie not with governments, but with private enterprise.

The Laikipia Ranch, 90,000 acres of poor cattle country in Northern Kenya.

Ranching and conservation may seem incompatible, but the people who run the ranch don't agree.

The chairman of the company that owns it is Kuki Gallman.

- Are they putting on weight?

- [Colin] They're definitely putting on weight, responding very well.

- [Kuki] The policy of this ranch has been and will always be to integrate wildlife and ranching because I believe that in the long run, with increase of population in this country, sanctuaries for protection of wildlife will not have a chance of survival unless they become productive.

- Maybe we'll keep the disease out.

- [George] The ranch manager is Colin Francombe.

- [Colin] The fact that elephants, eland, rhino are all basically browsers, they do little harm to the grazing, means that we can have all those animals on the ranch without their coming into direct conflict with the cattle.

The elephant especially helps to clear the thick bush so that the cattle can get in there more.

- [George] On arid land like this, cattle ranching is impossible unless you install liberal supplies of water.

The water draws in game animals from the surrounding country.

- [Colin] There are obviously points against, a lot of points against in that the elephant causes a lot of damage to fencing.

He pulls up water piping.

If we don't keep our tanks full, he gets very annoyed and he pulls up the water pipes.

He will occasionally break water tanks.

But on the other hand, these are points which one must just take into account on a ranch.

One must accept those losses in favor of the points which are for having the animals there.

There is definitely a need in the future for us to be able to have wild animals.

There's definitely a future for those wild animals.

And as I said, we're firmly committed to having them on the ranch.

- [George] But just as the water attracts the wildlife, so the wildlife attracts the poachers.

The local people here have always hunted, but mainly for meat.

Now, with the increasing value of rhino horn, poaching has become a commercial operation.

The animals that are not slaughtered have to be protected.

- [Colin] The first problem to tackle was the selection of our security men.

It's a difficult job.

A man requires a lot of bush knowledge, bush sense to be able to work in the bush.

Our security patrols operate on foot in very difficult, very thick terrain.

A lot of it's full of old buffalo.

And so you've gotta have people who have been really born and bred in that type of country.

- [George] Francombe got his men from an unlikely source.

- [Colin] I selected these people from an area close to the Meru Park, initially.

I went to that park and I arranged with the warden of the park to send out his own scouts to bring in as many hardcore poachers as they could find.

I brought them over here.

I gave them some decent uniforms to wear, and I instilled into them the fact that we had to protect the animals on this place and that they had to put their bush knowledge towards protecting them and not towards killing them.

Now, these people have to watch a rhino walking past them.

They watch a number of rhino walking past them every single day of their lives because they're checking on them every day.

Every single rhino they see going past them will probably have a value on its horn way above what they will learn in a whole year.

And yet, they're gonna put their lives to save and protect that animal.

- [George] The Laikipia Ranch now has about 70 rhinos, more than many of Kenya's national parks.

On another ranch in Kenya, the Solio Ranch, they've taken a different approach to the problem, a massive electrified fence that keeps animals in and people out.

Solio is owned by an American millionaire, Courtland Parfet.

In 1970, he fenced off 15,000 acres in the center of the ranch as a private sanctuary, a personal game reserve that was to include all the animals indigenous to the area, not just the grazers and browsers, but predators, such as lions and leopards, as well.

The idea was to set up a balanced ecosystem with the predators keeping the other animals in check.

Solio started off with about 20 black rhinos, and Parfet imported white rhinos from South Africa as well.

Although lions could kill a small rhino calf, adult rhinos have no natural enemies.

Parfet's rhinos increased.

[rhino grunts] [rhino grunts] [birds chirp] [bird chirping continues] The white rhinos now number 30, 80% of the total population in Kenya.

And the black rhinos have done well too.

The initial 20 have more than tripled.

Now, the sanctuary is threatened by its very success.

Unless something is done soon, it'll be destroyed by the weight of its own rhinos.

The man who has to solve the problem is Game Warden Rodney Elliott.

- [Rodney] We've successfully bred up to 70 black rhinos from a small population, and we are now ready to pass these rhinos onto the Kenya national parks.

And we have got to do this fairly quickly so that we don't run the risk of rhinos damaging their own habitat.

- [George] But the national parks are not yet in a position to take the rhinos from Solio Ranch.

They can't offer them a safe home, and there would be no point in transferring them just to be killed by poachers.

- [Rodney] The problem is that the national parks are not well off, and they have got to create secure rhino reserves for these rhinos that they're taking.

And this entails effective fencing, chain link fencing and electrification, and all the other funding that is necessary to police them after they've been released into these rhino sanctuaries.

And this funding has got to come from private donations, people who feel that the rhinos matter and are prepared to donate generously to enable the national parks to secure the future of these rhinos.

- [George] The fencing of sanctuaries has already started.

The Nakuru National Park is now being enclosed.

But until the fence is completed, the only safe place for Kenya's rhinos seems to be on private ranches.

It's clear that rhinos will breed and increase if they are given protection.

In the short term, their future may lie in captive breeding, and not necessarily in Africa.

[ranchers converse in foreign language] Closer to home, Texas, where there are already thriving populations of many wild animals from Africa and elsewhere in the world.

These black rhinos are one of the two pairs loaned by the Natal parks board to Game Coin, a Texas organization of hunters with an interest in conservation.

Rancher Calvin Benson.

- We started this project several years ago, and it took many, many hours of people's work and thousands of dollars to put this project together.

But basically, we're hunters, and we want to preserve that that has meant so much to us.

I found the place, Game Coin, with Harry Tennison.

He said, "I've got the dollars.

"Let's get together and merge this thing "and get it on its way to preserve that "that's being poached out so badly "in so many areas of the world."

We feel that this is the answer to the conservation of the black rhino.

- [George] Captive breeding may be the solution for other kinds of rhino too.

This is the Sumatran rhino, one of the three Asian species.

It's the smallest of the world's rhinos.

A fully grown adult weighs only one ton.

This one is in Malacca Zoo in Malaysia, the only one in captivity anywhere in the world.

It's a young animal, and the two horns haven't grown yet.

Unlike other rhinos, the Sumatran is hairy.

Fossil remains show that there used to be many more kinds of rhinos, and several of them were hairy.

Indeed, the wooly rhinos roamed the tundra as recently as 20,000 years ago.

[rhino wails] [rhino wails] There are probably fewer than 700 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild.

They used to be found over much of Southeast Asia, but now, they're virtually confined to the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo, Like so many other animals, they've suffered from a combination of hunting and destruction of their rainforest habitat.

The survivors are so scattered that many of them may never have a chance to meet up with another of their kind.

There are probably only three viable breeding populations left in the wild.

It's been suggested that the best chance of saving the Sumatran rhino is to set up breeding herds in captivity.

There are two schemes to do this, one American and one British.

But so far, neither has succeeded in capturing a single rhino.

[boat engine whirs] The Javan rhinoceros is even rarer than the Sumatran.

Like the Sumatran, it was once spread over much of Southeast Asia, and it too has suffered the twin pressures of hunting and destruction of its habitat.

Today, the only known population is in the swamp forests of the Ujung Kulon National Park on the western most tip of Java.

Even here, there are maybe only 50 animals left.

[birds chirp] French photographer Alain Compost has been visiting Ujung Kulon since 1977 to photograph the Javan rhino.

The forest is so dense that the only chance of a clear view is to catch the rhino bathing or crossing a river.

Compost uses a boat with a quiet electric motor to avoid warning the rhinos of his approach.

[boat engine whirs] [birds chirp] [birds chirp] [birds cries] [boat engine whirs] - All right.

- [George] Sightings are so rare, the Javan rhino has been filmed perhaps only once before.

[camera shutter clicks] [camera shutter clicks] Unlike the Sumatran and the two African rhinos, the Javan has just a single horn.

Indeed, it's sometimes called the lesser one-horned rhino to distinguish it from the Indian or greater one-horned rhino.

[camera shutter clicks] [birds chirp] [bird cries] The Indian rhino used to be found throughout the Terai, those swampy flatlands at the foot of the Himalayas.

But yet again, the species has been decimated by man.

Now, there are only about 1,700 left, most of them in the Kaziranga Sanctuary in Assam, and here in the Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal.

[birds chirp] Nepal is now firmly established on the international tourist circuit.

Visitors are drawn to Chitwan by the prospect of seeing tigers, and this.

[rhino grunts] [bird chirps] Chitwan has about 400 Indian rhinos.

Usually, they're solitary, but they do sometimes congregate in wallows or at feeding grounds.

Wallowing keeps them cool in hot weather and their skin in good condition.

Although they eat a wide range of vegetation, their staple diet is grass, a fact that has a profound influence on their relationship to man.

Armor-plated giants, they weigh 4,000 pounds.

[birds chirp] [water splashes] [birds chirp] Visitors to Chitwan bring Nepal much needed foreign currency.

Nepal is a poor country.

Much of the land is mountainous and inhospitable.

The few areas suitable for agriculture are crowded and can no longer support the growing population.

Chitwan's grassland, so attractive to rhinos, are ideal grazing for cattle too.

Human settlement extends right up to the park's boundary.

When fodder is scarce, cattle are often deliberately driven into the park to take advantage of the better grazing inside.

They're usually detected and driven out fairly quickly.

Chitwan is patrolled by units of the Royal Nepalese Army.

400 men are stationed there all the time.

This perhaps explains why no rhinos have been poached in Chitwan since 1976.

The encroaching cattle will be impounded.

To reclaim them, the owner will have to pay a fine of 10 rupees, about 50 cents.

But the army has to look after them in the meantime, and the cattle get such good grazing and custody that the owners often delay reclaiming them for several days.

Incursions across the park boundary aren't all one way.

People and their cattle open up the woodlands surrounding the park.

This encourages the spread of grass and makes the woods more attractive to rhinos.

What's more, the staple diet of the local people is rice.

To a rhino, a rice field is just more grass, and particularly lush and tempting grass at that.

So just as people and cattle are tempted to go into the park, rhinos are tempted to come out.

[rice rustles] [rice rustling continues] During the day, it's easy enough to keep rhinos out of the fields, but at night, it's different.

The villagers mount a guard, but not always effectively.

[farmer speaks in foreign language] This is not a manmade pathway.

It's a furrow bulldozed through the rice by a rhino.

[farmer speaks in foreign language] [farmer continues speaking in foreign language] Unhappy farmers receive no compensation for damage caused by rhinos.

[farmers converse in foreign language] A family can lose 90% of its crop of rice in a single night, and rice is the lifeblood of this subsistence economy.

Once again, human interests are in direct conflict with those of the rhino.

And yet, here in Nepal, the dilemma has been resolved in the rhinos' favor.

Elsewhere, rhinos are all too often the losers.

Should an animal be hunted to the verge of extinction because its horn yields a medicine of dubious value?

Should an animal be hunted to the verge of extinction because that same horn can make a dagger handle pleasing to the aye?

[people converse in foreign language] [footsteps thump] The last rhinos could be saved, but that will take a change in human attitudes.

[rhino grunts] [rhino snorts] [birds chirp] [bird chirping continues] [bird chirps] [bird chirping continues] [bird chirping continues] [engine whirs] [birds chirp] [bird chirping continues] [upbeat music]