Rhino calf rescued from tree after mother killed in poaching attack

A 3-week old white rhino calf was trapped for at least eight hours in the fork of a young thorn tree after its mother, named Alpha, was shot by poachers on a game farm in Assen, near Pretoria, South Africa. The calf blindly ran away from the poachers after one of them slashed it over its head with a panga.



The calf ran helter-skelter into a bush a few metres away from where the poachers had shot the cow in her heart and head, and ended up with his head trapped in the V-shaped fork of a young tree. In its desperate attempts to escape the calf had pawed deep grooves in the ground around the tree and had rubbed its neck raw against the trunks - causing his head to swell up. A rhino cannot move backwards.

The owner, Neels van Rensburg, said when he arrived at the carcass of the cow, the pitiful bleats of the calf was all one could hear. Alpha was one of the first rhinos that Van Rensburg bought. He said the poachers would have killed the calf as well, if the tree did not trap its head. Poachers usually shoot the calves because they keep trying to nuzzle the dead cow while the poachers cut off the rhino horn. "I heard the little one cry, I saw it was trapped and was hurting, but I could not do anything until the vet arrived,” Van Rensburg said.



Doctor Louis Greef, a veterinarian from Thabazimbi, two helpers and a game ranger calmed the calf by plugging its ears and putting a blindfold over its eyes. It took half an hour to lift its head free from the fork. After it was freed, the calf was put on a drip and loaded onto a trailer.

With photo gallery.