Rhino’s Dying Breath Signals General’s Return to War
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As he watched a white rhino take its final breath after poachers broke its back and hacked off its horn, major general Johan Jooste said he realized that South Africa is facing a war to save the endangered species.
It was one of at least 273 slaughtered this year by April 30 as poachers target South Africa, where 90 percent of the world’s rhinos live, for the horns which sell for more than gold by weight in China and Vietnam where they are believed to cure cancer and boost sexual prowess. Most are killed in the Kruger National Park, an area nearly as big as Israel that abuts a porous border with Mozambique easily crossed by poachers wielding assault rifles.