This has been a sad month for wild animals living in captivity.
A male white rhino was shot dead by poachers Monday night in a brazen raid on a zoo in the Parisian suburb of Thoiry. The poachers were after the rhino’s horn which they absconded with after sawing it off.
The attack is the latest in a string of animal abuse incidents in zoological parks around the world.
It wasn’t until early Tuesday morning that zookeepers discovered that Vince, a 5 year old adult male, had been shot by three bullets in the head and that his horn had been removed.
According to French daily Le Parisien, one or more poachers forced open the back door of the zoo before breaking into the rhinoceros enclosure, all without waking up the five people who live on the grounds of the African Animal Park Reserve.
“This was carried out despite the presence of five members of staff who live on the site and (despite) security cameras,” the zoo said.
Sources close to the investigation told Le Parisien that Vince’s second horn had been partially severed, suggesting that the killers were planning to steal the horns of other animals but had to decamp before they could do so.
The two other rhinos living in the enclosure, a 37-year-old female, Gracie, and a five-year-old male, Bruno, were unharmed.
Rhinoceros horns are worth on average between 30,000 and 50,000 euros — worth more than their weight in gold.
Although a U.N. convention prohibits the global trade of horns, they are still in high demand, particularly in China and other Asian countries where rhino horn — typically consumed in powdered form — is claimed to have aphrodisiac and medicinal properties. Scientists say that rhino horn — which is made from the same kind of substance that comprises human fingernails — has no medicinal value.
Over the last decade, South Africa has struggled to curb rampant poaching in the country, home to 80 percent of the remaining endangered animals. As a result, a quarter of the world’s population has already been decimated.
The Thoiry case is an unusual one, however.
While rhino horn-consumers normally find horns in auctions and other exhibition venues, this would be the first time in Europe that poachers attacked an animal living in a zoo in such a fashion.
Police said they are investigating the incident and that perpetrators remain at large.
The attack comes only a week after the widely decried beating of a hippo with metal bars, rocks and knives in a zoo in El Salvador. Gustavito, a favorite of park visitors, also died as a result of his injuries.
Also in the last week, visitors to a Tunisian zoo stoned to death a captive crocodile.
