It’s week two of being part of the dehorning team at Hluhluwe-iMfolozi and, like every day, my alarm goes off at 5:30 am. I crawl out of my dome tent (there is no dignified way of getting out of dome tents, no matter how many weeks one lives in one), darkness still blanketing the game capture camp, and head to the communal ablutions to get ready for the day.  

By daybreak a bunch of us are scuttling around the communal kitchen, stuffing snacks into our bags and pockets, having a quick cup of coffee and trading operational notes for the day. I’m assigned to one of the helicopter teams tasked with collecting biological samples from each rhino we dehorn. This operation also offers an unparalleled opportunity to gather valuable scientific data. 

We work in teams of five: a person with the chainsaw to dehorn the rhino, a scribe recording information on all rhinos, a sample collector, and two “muscles” guys who are strong enough to push, pull and roll rhinos out of whichever precarious situation they inevitably seem to get themselves into when under the influence of immobilisation drugs.  

Each team of five (there are usually two or three such teams on the go) is shuttled from one rhino to the next by a large helicopter, after the vet in a smaller helicopter has darted the rhino. This aerial method of getting around is used in parts of the park where there are no roads, and teams can’t be driven in by vehicle.

The team I’m on drew the lucky straw – we get to fly out into the iMfolozi Wilderness with the large helicopter to start the day. The other two teams drive out to a refueling point and wait to be picked up by the helicopter once we’ve been deployed.  

At sunrise, we pile into the helicopter with our equipment and bags and the pilot brings the engine to life. We fly over mist-covered valleys into the morning sun, waking herds of buffalo, wildebeest, impala and the odd elephant. It’s my favorite part of the day. How many people get to fly low level over the oldest game reserve in Africa daily?  

Frozen from the wind (the helicopter flies with doors off), we are dropped at the first set of white rhinos that have just been darted by a vet in the smaller helicopter. It’s an adult and a youngster. Our team makes the assumption that it is an adult female with her calf, but we soon discover that the adult is a male. Ordinarily this would be considered unusual, but during this operation we have come across young rhinos with adult males on a frequent basis. We suspect this is because of the high amount of poaching the park has experienced.  

When an adult female is shot and killed by poachers, she sometimes leaves a calf behind. If the orphan is small and still dependent on milk, its window of survival is tiny.  If rangers don’t discover the calf within 24 to 48 hours, it will usually die of starvation or be taken by predators. However, larger calves that are weaned, often look for any other rhinos they can team up with to survive, and it seems adult bulls don’t mind having an orphan or two in tow.

Similarly, during the dehorning we have come across crashes of rhinos (a “crash” is the collective noun for rhinos) all made up of youngsters of a similar age. Again, this is something rather unusual but appears to be a result of the older orphans finding safety in numbers.

We process the bull and youngster, taking blood, hair and faecal samples for research and microchip each rhino while they are being dehorned. It should be noted that dehorning doesn’t hurt rhinos – it is the equivalent of cutting your fingernails. In fact, rhino horn is made of keratin (the same material as our fingernails).

Once processed and dehorned, we administer an antidote to both rhinos and within one to two minutes they are back on their feet and trotting off. We radio the helicopter for a pick-up and listen out for the sound of the helicopter blades slapping the cool morning air to take us to the next rhinos.  

We work throughout the morning, leap-frogging from one set of rhinos to the next with the helicopter. It is hard work and by midday fatigue sets in, both mentally and physically.  

The helicopter oftentimes cannot land close to the sleeping rhinos due to steep terrain or thick bush, and so we run, carrying gear, often over undulating terrain and through said thick bush.  

The record set by one of the teams to process and dehorn a rhino was seven minutes, from when the team arrived at the rhino until it was woken up again. That’s barely enough time to catch one’s breath from all the running while working on the rhino.

On a good day, the teams manage to dehorn 30 to 40 rhinos in a day.  

The work begins to take a toll on the body as the days and weeks go on. Your back aches, the knees niggle and the body feels that much heavier when the alarm rudely awakens you in the morning. That said, I don’t think anyone involved in this historic operation would trade this work for the world. The teamwork and camaraderie are unlike anything I’ve experienced outside of game capture.  

Besides dehorning rhinos, we also come across peculiar sights, like a large broken off elephant tusk that we picked up to take to safe storage. The joke going around was that we’d dehorned an albino rhino when we carried the elephant tusk from the helicopter, along with the rhino horns from that morning. (For those wondering, every horn is catalogued and microchipped, and sent to a secure facility.

By midday, the heat finally puts a stop to the morning’s operation and we all gather at the helicopter refueling point to play rock-paper-scissors over who gets to fly back to camp with the helicopters (a 10-minute flight) or who has to take the vehicles back (a 45-minute drive).  

Today, I win a seat in the helicopter, strap myself in once more and we fly back to camp low-level, this time with the sun high in the sky. Back at base camp, we all crowd into the kitchen once more – hungry, thirsty, dusty and tired.  

After a quick shower and tending to some scratches, bruises and tick bites, I head to the game capture offices with my laptop to start a day’s work of my normal job as population manager for WWF’s Black Rhino Range Expansion Project.  

No rest for the wicked, though it is more than worth it. To be part of a team of a select few that are executing the largest operation to save Hluhluwe-iMfolozi’s rhinos (since Ian Player’s Operation Rhino in the 1960s that saved the white rhino from extinction) is a once-in-a-lifetime privilege that I’m incredibly grateful for.