And no one has the rhino more at heart than Kenneth. Without him and his scouts, the rhino would be like open bank vaults. Rhino conservationists also are trying to protect the animals by emptying the vault through dehorning. Under this program, started in 1991, scouts working with a parks veterinarian saw off the horns of anaesthetized rhinos. All that matters is they survive and breed.
Rhino are better without their horns than dead.
We hope once the poachers know all our rhino have been dehorned, they'll stop killing them. Some scouts report seeing tracks of poaching gangs that have circled hornless rhinos and then left them unharmed. However, dehorning is raising some complex issues. In the early days of dehorning, poachers operating outside the conservancies shot dehorned rhinos, perhaps so they wouldn't have to waste time tracking them again. Some people argue that removing horns may not help, since poachers know even a stub is worth money.