A TRAGIC loss and yet another rhino death scarred SA's tourism industry this past weekend as groups of rhino poachers attacked three of the herd of six resident rhinos living in Aquila Private Game Reserve near Cape Town.
 
Within the last year, Aquila’s anti poaching team has deterred two attempted rhino poaching attempts. In this weekend's case, Aquila's anti-poaching team is said to have surprised the poachers as the first rhino was found with its front horn sawn off with a chain saw and they left having only had time to get half way through the second horn before retreating.

This rhino has lost a lot of blood and is fighting for his life. The loss of blood and position it was lying in while drugged could have caused massive muscle and organ damage which could be fatal. This rhino was the first rhino reintroduced to Aquila and to the Western Cape in over 250 years since shot out by hunters.

The second rhino that was found was still alive and is recovering well.
 
A third rhino died in the attacks; its face literally hacked off with pangas and machetes proving that there were two active teams attacking the Aquila rhinos, one using a chain saw, the other using pangas and machetes to dehorn the rhino.
 
Aquila’s remaining 3 rhino are safe and fine.

The security team has been briefed and 24 guards have been positioned at strategic points along the boundaries and on higher ground to keep guard.

Rhino poachers are well equipped, heavily armed with automatic weapons, night and thermal vision equipment and well trained their modus operandi is to fly at night with thermal vision.

They can spot a rhino through bushes and mist over four miles away, they GPS the location of the rhino and drop their poaching teams off several kilometers away to walk in and normally dart the baby first so that the mother and father stay to protect and don’t run away.

These teams are ruthless and will stop at nothing to kill and maim for financial gain. In this case they got away with a street value of over 4 million rand in rhino horn.
 
Aquila is offering R100 000 reward for information leading to an arrest and prosecution of these poachers. Informants details, which will be kept confidential,can contact searl@aquilasafari.com.

Anyone wanting to monitor the progress of the rhino and the anti poaching campaign can follow Aquila on Facebook  (www.facebook.com/aquilasafari) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/aquilasafaris) pages.