avi@dailyheadlines.com
A demonstration of a new anti-poaching procedure came
to a tragic end in South Africa yesterday. A white rhino that had been sedated
in order for veterinarians to implant a tracking device in his horn—and inject
it with dye and a pesticide toxic to humans—died under anesthesia in front of
stunned journalists.
"It’s a tragedy, it’s a disaster," says
Charles van Niekerk, the vet who developed the technique. The rhino, nicknamed
Spencer, was relatively old, and vets will do a post-mortem to see if he had a
heart condition.
Van
Niekerk says this is the first rhino to die during the experimental procedure.
Sedating an animal that size is always risky, he says, but the poaching crisis
in South Africa is so severe that desperate measures are called for. "The
easy way out is to say ‘No more’—but then the poachers win," he says.
"We’re being driven by a desperate need to do something. We had to begin
sooner than we wanted to, but if we waited three or four years, are we going to
have any rhinos left?"
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| Veterinarians to implant a tracking device in his horn |
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| Spencer died few minuted after the the experimental procedure |
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