Defending the Rhino Newsround Specials

South Africa, one of the most spectacular places on the planet.

I'm travelling hundreds of miles across the country, which is

home to some of the world's most magnificent creatures...

..and the largest population of rhino in the world.

But these animals are facing a fight.

And, at the moment, the battle is being lost.

With the population of rhino where it's going now,

in 15 years they'll be finished.

There won't be any rhino left in the wild.

I'll meet the people putting their lives in danger

to protect Africa's wildlife before it's too late,

and track down two rhino that are lucky to be alive.

She has fought back from probably the depths of hell.

My journey is starting in the Kruger National Park region.

This wildlife preserve covers a large area.

It's one of Africa's great reserves, and is home to lots of lions,

elephants, giraffe, cheetah and rhino.

I can't quite believe that I'm so close to all of these wild animals.

Just behind me there's a herd of zebras,

over there, there's some buffalo.

And, off to the distance, there's rhinos just chilling out,

and it might look like there's loads of animals around,

but actually keeping these animals safe is quite a tough job.

The problem is being caused by poaching,

which is the illegal hunting of animals. It's big business,

and it could wipe these animals off the face of the planet.

Across Africa, since 2008, nearly 6,000 rhino have been lost.

That's quicker than they're being born,

and means they could be wiped out completely.

Poachers hunt animals like rhino and elephant to sell their body parts.

Horns and ivory which are found in tusks can be illegally sold

for huge amounts of money.

By weight, rhino horn is worth more by the gram than diamonds and gold.

Poaching happens in many different African countries,

not just South Africa.

But most of the horns and tusks don't stay here.

Once taken, they're smuggled

and shipped to Asian countries, like China and Vietnam.

They're used to carve ornaments and jewellery.

Some people buy them to show off how rich they are, and others believe

they have magical healing powers and use them as medicines.

But scientists say these medicines don't work, although lots of leaders

around the world have made an agreement to stop illegal animal

parts coming in to their countries, it's still happening.

And it hasn't stopped the poachers.

I've been invited by head ranger Chris to join him

on one of his patrols.

Day in, day out, the rangers here must check on all the animals,

and make sure none of them has been a victim of poaching overnight.

What's going on with his horn? Why is his horn like that?

You'll see his horn's rather square.

All that's happened is we de-horned him.

A horn is like a fingernail, it grows continuously,

so, when you cut it off, the horn just keeps growing,

so, in two years' time, again we'll have to cut that horn again.

Because we're having such a problem with the poachers here. They're

coming in and they're just trying to kill these rhino for their horns.

So, obviously, by taking their horns off,

you make it less attractive for these poachers to come in.

Is that quite sad, cos it's kind of part of their identity?

I tell you, I wanted to cry when we cut them off, because some of these

rhino had beautiful long horns, 30 inch horns and that,

which is fantastic, and they look beautiful.

But, to save the rhinos, we have no option but to do it.

How many rhinos are being killed a day in this area?

Well, put it this way, in the whole of South Africa, it's

an average of about three to four rhino a day that are being killed.

How long until there aren't many rhinos left?

Well, you know, they're disappearing at an alarming rate now,

and I reckon in 15 years, they'll be finished,

there won't be any rhino left in the wild.

The way they're poaching them at the moment,

you'll only see them in pictures and in a zoo.

But, in the wild, they'll be gone.

Chris and his team of rangers patrol this vast reserve

day and night, not only to try to prevent the poaching,

but to keep check on all the animals.

And two have gone missing.

Anyone seen the female rhino with the newborn baby today?

'Yeah, the rhino at 1,800 is the big one, not the young one.'

So it's not the newborn baby?

'Not...'

Unfortunately, it's the wrong baby.

So, that female's still around here somewhere.

This is really worrying for Chris and his team,

so we set off in search of the missing rhino.

Every day she's here like clockwork,

and she might be around still, you know.

-Keep looking, you never know, might be lucky.

-OK.

It's nearly the end of the day,

and it's important we find them before it gets too dark.

'I've spotted it here in the shade wallowing in the mud.'

All right, thanks a lot, Andy.

Chris gets the radio call he was hoping for.

The mother and baby are safe.

These animals are endangered. Every animal that we lose is terrible.

It's a loss to the whole community, it's a loss to the inheritance of

South Africa, everything. You think... Each one is so valuable for

us that we can't afford to lose one, and every one is another one gone,

another one gone. And, as I say, we're just going deeper and deeper

into that downhill spiral of more and more being poached.

Spending the day with Chris and the team,

I've just seen what a massive job this is.

I mean, that area that they have to cover is absolutely huge,

but there's been some absolute highlights as well.

Finding that baby rhino was just incredible.

The next morning, I headed to a special sanctuary in Mpumalanga

to learn more about what's being done to care for animals that

have lost their parents because of poaching.

I'm meeting Petronel, one of the few people in the world

who specialise in caring for these endangered species.

What kind of state are these babies in when you are rescuing,

when you first see them?

I can tell you, not a good state.

Very dehydrated. It's traumatic, they're stressed.

Their herd is gone, their mum is gone, it's terrible.

They're in a terrible state when they get to us.

But when they get here, what do you do for them?

What's the rehabilitation stage for them?

First to get them to trust us,

we treat the wounds and we put them on fluids and let them rest.

And then start getting them familiar with "Listen, we're actually here to

"help you. We want you to take the bottle."

And that first step, that first 24 hours,

I would say is the most important when they arrive.

There was one baby rhino that I've heard about,

and I'd really like to know more.

-That's LoFo, so let me come and show you.

-Oh, great.

LoFo is an eight-month-old baby rhino.

He was lost and then found, and that's how he got the name, LoFo.

Let's come here.

We looked for him for five days, and, fortunately, they found him...

..and flew him over.

But now we're working very hard to get all these wounds sorted out.

LoFo's mum was killed by poachers in Kruger National Park.

He was also badly injured,

with several serious wounds to his legs and back.

The rescue saved his life.

But there's still a long way to go before he's fully recovered.

Seeing every rhino here today, I've realised how big this situation is.

They've all lost their mums due to poaching incidents,

and that's incredibly sad.

But LoFo here, you can see, there is definitely hope.

My journey's now taking me to the Eastern Cape of South Africa,

and one of the most hi tech wildlife reserves in the world.

I've seen the problems that poaching has caused,

and now I've come to meet the people who say they may have the solution.

LB leads a team of rangers who are using

technology in the fight against poaching.

We test different types of technologies and try to prove

the application, how they can be successful in the field.

Anything from boots,

all the way up to advanced sensors that have never been used before.

Is the technology that you have here working?

It is working. We're fortunate to say we haven't had a poaching

in over three years, and we get stronger and better each day.

So, what is this system and what does it show?

So, this is looking at all of our personnel, our equipment,

our vehicles out in the reserve.

So, how does this technology work?

It allows us to manage our people and our equipment to always make

the optimum or the correct choice.

So we can make the correct choice,

we can get our equipment and personnel to the right place at the

right time, and it gives us a huge advantage over the poachers.

The animals are most at risk at night,

because the dark makes it harder for the poachers to be seen.

This kit will keep us safe and monitored at all times.

We have tracking systems on you, we have cameras that are live

streaming, we've got radios, knives, we've got armed people with us.

Let's go out and do some patrolling.

It's pitch-black, so the jeep has high powered lights

to help us find our way.

So what we'll do now is we're going to start driving and we're going to

be checking fence lines, checking our animals in all of our different

areas, so we use our system to tell us where our vulnerabilities are.

And we're going to drive around and we're going to check those.

So we'll check everything that we need to do, and if we have

-any alerts that come up then we'll respond to those accordingly.

-OK.

'This is dangerous work, so our location is monitored at all times.

'Whilst out in the field, we use specialist night-vision cameras

'to help us try to spot any poachers or anything out of the ordinary.'

Why do you think poachers risk their lives to do something like this?

A lot of times they have nothing else. Because there's so much

poverty here, they don't have another way to make money, and they

can make more money so fast here that they're willing to do it.

We know if we lose the rhino then we're going to lose all species,

and because it's funding organised crime, we have to take a stand.

Someone has to do it.

'LB and his team never give up,

'and they work through the night to keep the animals safe.'

My time in South Africa is coming to an end.

But there's one more animal the team here tell me I've got to see.

The rhino that's given them hope and inspired them

to keep going in the fight against the poachers.

And this man knows her better than anyone.

Four years ago now, poachers came on to this

place in the middle of the night, and they found a group of rhino.

They darted three of them, and those poachers took their horns and they

left the reserve, probably assuming that they were going to die.

So, with Thandi, what happened next when you saw her?

When I found her,

my first impression of her was that we had no chance.

But, to my amazement, when we started to treat her, we saw this

life just come back into her.

She got up on to her feet, which amazed us. We didn't think that was

going to be possible on that first day. And she walked off into this

beautiful landscape looking awful, but, even on that first day,

there was a glimmer of hope that maybe she would pull through.

Thandi has become a story of hope.

Not only did she survive, but she's also given birth to a calf.

After hearing the emotional story of this special rhino, I couldn't

wait to get a glimpse of the miracle Thandi and her baby, Thembi,

enjoying their new life.

-Look, there she is.

-Oh, my gosh.

Wow, that's amazing.

-You see her there?

-I can see her, I can see her.

Standing there next to Thandi.

-So it's Thembi, and Thandi.

-Yep, little Thembi the baby, and Thandi,

and then, just to her left, there is the bull, and that's dad.

-It's like a family picture.

-Incredible, eh?

Thandi is a very special rhino.

She has fought back from probably the depths of hell,

and she has survived, she's out here living in this amazing place.

She's having babies and her story is just amazing.

And, wherever I go, people tell me over and over again

the reason why they are so involved and doing

so much for rhino is because of what Thandi did for them.

In the few days I've been in South Africa,

nearly 50 rhino have been poached.

In the last ten years, half of the world's rhino have been killed.

If poaching continues at this rate,

the species will be wiped from the face of the planet for good.

Humans have caused this problem,

and the demand for ivory and horn needs to stop.

But people like Chris, Petronel,

LB, Will and you can be the solution.