In April 2010, the carcass of the last Javan rhino to live in Vietnam was found in Cat Tien National Park. This is the story of the people who investigated the killing.
In the dense, hilly jungles of southwest Vietnam, a lone rhino once wandered. She was the last of her subspecies and this was her home.
Cat Loc, a northern sector of Cat Tien National Park, is a part of the world once ravaged by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Today it is better known as a wildlife conservation area – but also a place where some of those efforts have failed.
The last rhino spent her days roaming across thousands of hectares, a much wider range than was thought natural for these herbivores. But then again, she had the run of the place. There were creeks and rivers where she could wallow and there was also plenty of food – like rattan, a woody climbing plant found all over the area.
But one day, a hunter peered at her through the sights of a semi-automatic weapon – and pulled the trigger. We do not know if the rhino saw her killer and we do not know how many times she was shot. But as that gunshot cracked out in echoes across the forest, the extinction of Javan rhinos in Vietnam was sealed. However, it did not happen immediately. The rhino, though wounded, managed to escape. And so, for a time, she disappeared into the thick greenery that sustained her.
The fortunes of Javan rhinos in Vietnam, a subspecies called Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus, were closely followed at the time by Sarah Brook. Brook was working then as a conservationist for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Her days were spent struggling through the inhospitable terrain of Cat Loc – steep hills and barely penetrable vegetation – with a sniffer dog, trained to follow the scent of rhino dung.
One day, a hunter peered at her through the sights of a semi-automatic weapon – and pulled the trigger
For nearly six months Brook had been collecting dung samples, on the trail of Javan rhinos in the region, not knowing for sure that there was only one. She worked closely with the national park rangers and set video camera traps.
But the traps were set too late. They never captured footage of the rhino and in all that time, Brook never once saw it alive with her own eyes. The Cat Loc forest is big, and, as it turned out, this rhino was all alone inside it.
In early 2010, distressing news arrived.
A ranger sent Brook photographs of a rhino skeleton, discovered in April. A photo of the skull, separated from the rest of the animal's bones, clearly showed that the horn had been removed. In fact, it had been crudely hacked off. Poaching.
A crack team of experts from around the world found themselves assembled at the national park
The park had already issued a statement saying that the rhino's death was the result of natural causes, but Brook was not so sure. And, upon checking the bones a few weeks later in May, she discovered a bullet lodged in the left foreleg.
In the dense, hilly jungles of southwest Vietnam, a lone rhino once wandered. She was the last of her subspecies and this was her home.
Cat Loc, a northern sector of Cat Tien National Park, is a part of the world once ravaged by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Today it is better known as a wildlife conservation area – but also a place where some of those efforts have failed.
The last rhino spent her days roaming across thousands of hectares, a much wider range than was thought natural for these herbivores. But then again, she had the run of the place. There were creeks and rivers where she could wallow and there was also plenty of food – like rattan, a woody climbing plant found all over the area.
But one day, a hunter peered at her through the sights of a semi-automatic weapon – and pulled the trigger. We do not know if the rhino saw her killer and we do not know how many times she was shot. But as that gunshot cracked out in echoes across the forest, the extinction of Javan rhinos in Vietnam was sealed. However, it did not happen immediately. The rhino, though wounded, managed to escape. And so, for a time, she disappeared into the thick greenery that sustained her.
The fortunes of Javan rhinos in Vietnam, a subspecies called Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus, were closely followed at the time by Sarah Brook. Brook was working then as a conservationist for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Her days were spent struggling through the inhospitable terrain of Cat Loc – steep hills and barely penetrable vegetation – with a sniffer dog, trained to follow the scent of rhino dung.
One day, a hunter peered at her through the sights of a semi-automatic weapon – and pulled the trigger
For nearly six months Brook had been collecting dung samples, on the trail of Javan rhinos in the region, not knowing for sure that there was only one. She worked closely with the national park rangers and set video camera traps.
But the traps were set too late. They never captured footage of the rhino and in all that time, Brook never once saw it alive with her own eyes. The Cat Loc forest is big, and, as it turned out, this rhino was all alone inside it.
In early 2010, distressing news arrived.
A ranger sent Brook photographs of a rhino skeleton, discovered in April. A photo of the skull, separated from the rest of the animal's bones, clearly showed that the horn had been removed. In fact, it had been crudely hacked off. Poaching.
A crack team of experts from around the world found themselves assembled at the national park
The park had already issued a statement saying that the rhino's death was the result of natural causes, but Brook was not so sure. And, upon checking the bones a few weeks later in May, she discovered a bullet lodged in the left foreleg.
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Animals