'Mama Rhino': SA rhino may become extinct by 2015

Trendler is planning to open a special treatment centre for them, warning that the situation has become critical. "Rhinos will be wiped out from South Africa's wildlife parks by 2015 if poaching continues at its current rate," she warned, adding that corruption among officials is contributing to the ongoing slaughter.

Trendler is busy building a rhino orphanage at a golf and leisure resort near Mokopane in Limpopo, in the north of the country. Presented as South Africa's first non-commercial and non-tourist rhino orphanage, it will have an intensive care unit with incubators, drips and surveillance cameras. A small team of carers will look after the baby rhinos, and human contact will be kept to a minimum because the aim is to release them back into the wild. Once they are strong enough to leave the unit, they will be introduced to their "surrogate parents," a pair of adult rhinos who live in the resort's game park, Trendler said.

The sharp increase in poaching has raised concerns among experts that the animals could disappear from the wild within the next four years, Trendler said. "You hate to sound alarmist, you hate to even consider that it could happen. But if the poaching continues at the current rate we could eventually see rhino go extinct." The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that wildlife conservation and animal welfare people have been implicated in the poaching industry, Trendler said. "There are some incredibly good guys in the business who are doing amazing things and who would give their lives for those rhino. But unfortunately we do have an element of corruption. There have already been prosecutions and arrests, where government officials are complicit."

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