by Evan Antin
It was so worth it. Within a few minutes we were swimming right alongside them. Magic. The calf was clinging so close to his mama it looked like he was perched on her nose. This position and one under the mom’s flipper are common ways for calves to “ride” because they’re hydrodynamic spots that help the calves conserve energy as they migrate through the ocean. It’s called slipstreaming, basically hanging close enough to a larger moving object to reduce your own drag. To keep their strength up, these giant babies also nurse underwater, consuming around 150 gallons of milk each day for the first months of their lives.
We approached cautiously and kept a respectful distance, and the whales went about their business, clearly not stressed by our swimming nearby. All the while, a steady, semi-hysterical chatter ran through my mind: This is CRAZY! I can’t believe this is happening! I mean, I could hear them vocalizing to each other. I could see the rippled pattern of the mother’s throat pleats. I could feel the wake of the water when they moved.
Humpbacks are a global species—they live in every ocean. But they’re divided into several different populations, based on their migration patterns. Even though they are geographically diverse, they are still an at-risk species. For hundreds of years they were hunted nearly to extinction. Finally, in the second half of the twentieth century, the world started taking action, passing increasingly restrictive laws to protect them. The fact that the numbers of these creatures are rebounding today is proof that conservation efforts can work and save a species. One population of humpbacks that had dwindled down to just a few hundred whales in the 1950s has now recovered to an estimated twenty-five thousand.
It’s mind-blowing to think about what conservation can do while you’re actually watching it in action. There I was treading water in the Pacific Ocean, watching a whale calf playing, rolling on his back, waving a flipper, and brushing up against his mother—totally casual and content. Every few minutes he’d surface for a sip of fresh air. The mother was calm and observant, nuzzling the “little” guy when he came close but not following him to the surface. Mature humpbacks can go nearly ten times as long as calves between breaths of air if they choose to.
When the calf got tired, he tucked himself under his mother’s chin, another clever adaptation for a creature learning how to manage its giant body. Whales aren’t born understanding how to control their buoyancy in the water, and until they get the hang of it they can rely on mama to hold them secure when they want to stay down by putting themselves under her.
Being in the water with these whales was a much bigger event than just seeing them—we were feeling and experiencing their presence. These creatures can grow to sixty feet long, can weigh up to forty tons, and can live as long as ninety years. They are a force of nature in every sense. And all the evidence we have available to us tells us that they are also highly intelligent, emotional creatures. They’re indisputably mighty, but they can also be gentle, protective, playful, angry, and sad.
As a traveler, as a vet, and just as a person, I rarely encounter any species that inspires the kind of fascination I experienced getting close to these whales.
When the whales swam away, Dr. Poole and I changed gears, moving into research mode. By studying the shed skin the whales leave behind in the water, a university team can garner information from each individual’s DNA and also track their migration patterns.
Surprisingly, this job required nothing more than one of the same tiny aquarium nets I use on fish tanks at home. We swam through the water, scooping up sloughed-off skin samples. Just like all mammals, the whales are constantly shedding skin, and it was surprisingly easy to pick them up in the water. The time we live in now is a whole new age in veterinary science, when just the capturing of those few samples can provide a wealth of knowledge about the whales we saw, their genetics, and even their diet and habits.
By the end of our day on the water, Dr. Poole, Captain Maui, and I had identified, swum with, and collected shed skin samples from eleven different whales. For me, the entire day was a dream come true.
9
South Africa
Nothing makes you feel that you’ve gone from the sidelines of animal conservation to the heart of it like being part of an operation designed to keep a critically endangered species alive for the next generation—especially when that operation involves a helicopter, colleagues armed with dart guns and real guns, a team of conservationists, and power tools.
Of all the species we need to worry won’t be around for our children and grandchildren to see, one of the highest on the list is the rhinoceros. These animals are among the most iconic representatives of African wildlife, and at this writing the world is losing at least three to five of them every day in Africa, where the majority of their population lives. Their slow pace of reproduction can’t begin to keep up, so the numbers in their herds are dwindling, with no end to the decline in sight. The reason for all this loss is a huge misconception about the powers and value of a single commodity: rhino horn. Misinformed patients buy it to treat a huge variety of ailments, and a clique of greedy collectors covet it as a status symbol, in showy forms like ornaments, jewelry, and cups.
As a veterinarian and as someone educated on this topic by intensely personal experience, I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that a rhino horn is made almost entirely of keratin. It contains trace amounts of calcium and melatonin, but it’s chiefly composed of the same basic protein structure your fingernails are made of, or a cow’s hoof, or a bird’s beak. Keratin is an inert substance, and nothing special. It absolutely cannot restore youth. It won’t make you a sex machine. It won’t set you right after a hard night’s drinking. It can’t bring down a fever, relieve gout, or cure cancer—not any more than powdering and ingesting your own toenails could.
Despite the facts about the medicinal properties of rhino horn, in some parts of the world (in Asia and particularly in Vietnam in recent years) crackpot “medicine” practitioners are still selling it as a miracle cure for almost every kind of ailment. True traditional Chinese medicine has officially disavowed this, but with a heritage that’s over two thousand years old, nothing stops on a dime. Investigations have found rhino horn and other poached and illegally traded wildlife products readily available in China. Even if the denial by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine were effective, every time one group turns away from an ancient “cure,” it seems, another one rises up to embrace it. At the time of this writing, the poaching of rhinos in South Africa has been on the upswing for more than a decade, with the numbers of animals killed jumping from 83 in 2008 to a staggering 769 in 2018. The value of the horns has increased during that time as well, to the point where it’s become so ridiculously inflated that the substance is worth more than its weight in gold and at times is the most expensive product on the black market. Rhinoceros horns have become such a commodity that even decades-dead specimens aren’t exempt, and the 2010s saw more than twenty rhino horn heists from museums and auction houses in Europe alone.
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As the price of rhino horn has exploded, so has the level of sophistication and commitment of the people who deal in it. I’ve traveled all over the world and encountered poachers on every continent and in dozens of countries. Most of them do what they do simply to feed their families for another day or week or month. That’s a different kind of problem from having an entire criminal cartel committed to stealing, smuggling, and selling a single body part. And it doesn’t begin to help us process the fact that every new supply means there’s another dead rhino and the whole species has taken a huge hit so that some greedy dealer can get his hands on a few pounds of horn.
It was learning about all of this, especially the fact that it’s a problem that is rapidly getting more dire, that led me to South Africa to meet with a group called Rhino 911. These guys are at the epicenter of what can only be described as a war to save the rhino from extinction.
The first step in achieving real change is just making people aware o
f the problem. By the time I learned about Rhino 911 and the work they do, I’d built up a decent following on social media—enough connections to allow me to effectively reach out and share some of the facts and falsehoods about the value of these animals with about a million people. That’s how I got invited to come out and help with a horn trim—the painless removal of the part of the rhino greedy poachers find so irresistible. To this day, that event remains one of the most exciting and rewarding wildlife encounters of my life.
Have Saw, Will Travel
In the summer of 2017, I made the first of many trips to South Africa to help raise awareness about the growing threat to these giant, iconic mammals. My short stay was one of the most noteworthy of my time in wildlife conservation, and it started with a horn trim on day one.
In theory, trimming a horn should be a quick, easy procedure. I mean, I can trim a dog’s nails or a bird’s beak or even a pig’s hooves in minutes. But trimming a rhino horn is an entirely different level of operation. Because of the size of the animals, their endangered status, the fact that the substance you’re trimming is potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the government oversight required, this is an event.
Although I knew the process was going to be a big deal, my first time assisting with one of these operations was still a shocker. First of all, there were a lot of people involved. Overhead we had a helicopter pilot and a veterinarian, Dr. Gerhardus Scheepers (who is an amazing shot with a dart gun). Our group on the ground included a veterinarian, a highly skilled vet tech, the owner of the land, several members of her private security and land-management teams, local and foreign veterinary students, and two representatives from the government, there to oversee the process and ensure that not so much as a sliver of the high-value horn disappeared in the process.
Waiting to get this operation underway, I was so eager I couldn’t stand still. I kept pacing around the truck, ready to go and then some. We were all on radio comms, and the minute the helicopter team had pinpointed the rhinos (in this case, a female and her calf) and made their shots, they started tracking from above. We took off in trucks to follow. Once the darts hit, a rhino may continue to travel for miles before the drugs fully take effect, and there’s nothing you can do during that time except follow and wait. If the pursuit goes on for more than seven or eight minutes and the rhino is still on the move, it means either the drugs in the first dart were insufficient, they didn’t penetrate past the animal’s thick skin, or the dart got stuck in bone or some other non-vascular structure. This day, the helicopter kept a visual on the rhinos, trying to gently “herd” them toward the road so the team could reach them quickly, meanwhile radioing coordinates for us on the ground.
When the mother started to slow, it was time for us to get to work. Watching her was a fascinating lesson in what a perfectly dosed sedative can do to a four-thousand-pound beast. This mama was weaving a little, not covering much ground, lifting her legs really high—like the bulkiest, least-graceful high-stepping show horse in history. Her balance started growing wobbly, and that was our cue to approach and get her eyes and ears covered. Anytime you dull the senses of a wild mammal, that simple act helps cut down on their stress. White rhinos aren’t typically aggressive, but these were not typical circumstances, and we needed to take care approaching this mama, who was obviously running out of steam.
Running up from behind, we got a towel over her face and then positioned people on both sides of her to guide her to a safe place to ease her giant body to the ground.
So here was this huge, round, lumbering, stumbling rhino, with two pink darts poking out of her hindquarters and what looked like a handkerchief over her eyes. (It was a bath towel, but she dwarfed it.) I was on her right with another guy, and three more members of the team were on her left—all of us trying to steer her to a soft landing. The whole scene might have been hilarious if it weren’t so deadly serious.
In my peripherals, I could see all of this playing out across the field with the second rhino, the baby. The little guy had no horn to trim, but having the kiddo awake while the mom is getting work done brings trouble and anxiety all around. The babies cry and grunt, they stomp their feet, they rush the human team, and more than anything they try to get close to their mother. It’s not ideal to have that big and immediate a distraction while you’re operating a saw in close proximity to an animal’s face.
Even after these rhinos go down, typically they continue to hold their heads up, which makes it a little easier to do the job at hand. This one, though, flopped over on her left and lay there quietly. The keratin in a rhino’s horn is highly dense, but more so than even a dog’s nails, it has a quick where tissue and bones meet the structure. Doing a trim, you have to remove as much of the horn as possible without cutting into the living tissue, where things can get messy and painful for the rhino—and also where any exposure could leave the animal open to infection. As long as you stay on the horn, this process is completely painless and harmless to the rhino; nevertheless, it’s important to get it right. We measured a short distance—about the width of four of my fingers—from the base of the horn and got started. Although some teams use chain saws, Rhino 911 prefers reciprocating saws because they’re more accurate for fine cutting and avoid subjecting the rhino to fumes from a combustion engine, which can be caustic to their eyes.
While the vet tech monitored the rhino’s breathing and heart rate, I started working as quickly and efficiently as I could with the saw to remove the bulk of the horn. This was heavy work, cutting through a material nearly as dense as stone. As I finished the clear cut, I lifted the horn away. It was heavy—between seven and eight pounds—and I found it impossible to look at it without thinking of its ridiculous value. The hunk of horn in my hand was worth a small fortune—to a smuggler who could get it to a final destination in Asia, around half a million dollars—for absolutely no proven medical reason or inherent value at all.
Once the horn is cut, what’s left is a squared-off stump, and my next job was to smooth down its edges, first with the saw and then with an electric rotating sander with a tungsten plate. Tungsten is one of the few materials that can keep its form after grinding several rhino horns. The sanding was more delicate work, and I wore down the horn until I could just see a hint of the pink quick beneath. It’s a sad fact that this job was necessary, because even the raised edges of horn that remained after the trim held too much value to be left behind; that small remnant of keratin would jeopardize her life. I went through the entire process with the large front horn and then repeated it with the smaller one behind it.
Typically, while the rhino is down, the team takes a few minutes to conduct a veterinary exam, give injectable medications (including anti-parasitics, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and a vitamin supplement), and check for wounds. This case was no exception, especially since this rhino had recently given birth. Rhinos are so huge, though, that lying on their sides can create enough pressure to damage their lungs or abdominal organs or even their muscles, if they’re not in an ideal position or hold still for too long. There was no way this was going to happen on our watch, and so this experienced team moved in after about fifteen minutes to push this huge mama into a chest-up (sternal) position and then gently ease her onto her other side. It took all of us to make it happen. The rhino, bless her heart, slept right through it.
While I conducted an exam, the government officials documented the horn trimmings. This is a highly regulated process, with a lot of safeguards in place to ensure that no one steals an ounce of it. The entire event is recorded, including vital stats about the rhino and the precise weight of the horn trimmings. Then the horn is drilled into, microchipped on the inside, epoxied closed, and sealed in a box for transportation. To guarantee its long-term security, a small amount of it is also separated to serve as a DNA sample for any future potential identification.
As far as I was concerned, the best part of this process came after the work was done, after ever
yone except the veterinarians had taken a step back in anticipation. I crouched next to the rhino and injected her with the anesthetic reversal medication, then moved away to watch and wait. I could see the other vet doing the same thing with the baby.
Within a minute, the mama’s head was up. She gave it a shake, clearing the cobwebs, and then clambered to her feet. Rhinos are very vocal and they don’t have great vision, so as soon as this one had her wits about her, the first thing she did was call out for her baby. Across the field, the baby, also on his feet by then, called back. Their vocalizations sounded like someone forcing air into their mouth through their teeth—an innocent, low whinny, especially endearing coming from the calf. For a few seconds, they played this awkward, sweet savannah game of Marco Polo, until they finally found themselves facing each other. The mother’s entire body language changed—relaxing and leaning toward her kiddo. The baby looked like he’d gotten a jolt of new energy, jumping toward his mom and coming running. He raced up to her, couldn’t quite stop, and bumped her shoulder. Not wanting to move away, he leaned in and nuzzled her neck. The two of them stood together, snuggling, while the entire Rhino 911 team watched and smiled.
The mother’s horn was gone, but its removal would never cause her a second of pain. And the simple act of removing it had made her a vastly less desirable target for poachers. As I watched these two rhinos trot off, calf in front of his mother, it brought happy tears to my eyes to know that we might have saved their lives with thirty minutes and a painless trim. I wanted to grab every member of that team in a great big bear hug. I was at a loss for words to express how much it had meant to me to be a part of their work.