Bloody Trophy (2025) Movie Script
1
This movie contains scenes that may be
considered drastic to same viewers.
[ominous ambient tones]
[man] This is just a souvenir
that a hunter is taking back.
[footsteps on dry grass]
If they look at that in their house,
they can then think back of what
they have experienced.
People are drawn to that,
to hunt these dangerous animals.
One of the most expensive hunts
is to hunt the rhino.
[intense rhythmic music builds]
[gunshot]
[male hunter 1] You knocked down
the second one like a pro!
[male hunter 2]
I aimed at the shoulder blade.
[Karol Wolnicki] Among EU countries,
Poland was the leading country
in terms of rhinoceros hunting
in South Africa.
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki] Everybody knew
these hunters were just frontmen.
Those officials put them up
for the photos.
They knew the horns were not for them.
They just had to sign the papers
and not ask any questions.
[Julian Rademeyer]
The price for rhino horn
fluctuated around USD 30,000
to 60,000 for a kilogram.
I was intrigued about
who were the people behind this.
What was driving this.
That's what really pulled me into this.
You see Chumlong Lemtongthai.
He's holding a rifle.
[William Fowlds]
Chumlong and his boss
were responsible
for not one rhino, not ten rhinos,
but, maybe, hundreds of rhinos.
[Paul O'Sullivan] These pseudo-hunters,
they're not real hunters.
So the whole thing,
everything about it, was criminal,
from start to finish.
It's not just about a piece of horn.
It's not just about the rhino's nose.
I don't think this is about the rhino.
For me, the rhino is a symbol.
- Is the dart in, Julian?
- [over radio] Yeah, dart's in.
[helicopter blades whirring overhead]
[intense rhythmic music continues]
[Lindy Sutherland]
Rhino have been under threat always.
They're critically endangered.
They're on the brink of extinction.
And are being completely persecuted
and brutally attacked for their horns.
It's just terrible.
[music ends abruptly]
[silent gunshot]
BLOODY TROPHY
THE ILLEGAL RHINO HORN TRADE
[gentle instrumental music]
GRABICE, POLAND
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki]
I've been a police officer since 1991.
I've been practically
through all the levels on the force.
I worked in
the criminal investigation department
of the Opole Provincial Police HQ.
My superior told me about the case.
He said I would be
leading an investigation
on rhino horn smuggling.
INVESTIGATIVE POLICE OFFICER
And I focused on the job.
We went to the county police HQ
and took over the investigation.
At first it seemed it was something
we could close within a month.
It turned out, the case wasn't so simple.
With the prosecutor we decided to expand
the investigation over the whole country,
and the case started to grow.
[Andrzej Kepel]
We noticed an alarming regularity.
An exceptionally large number
of Polish hunters
could afford to hunt for rhinos.
The price of that is considerable.
ENDANGERED SPECIES EXPERAnnually, two Germans, one Spaniard,
three Americans, one Britisher,
one Dane, and 15 Poles can afford it.
[subtle, mysterious music]
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki]
We started visiting hunters
who were said to have such trophies
in their places of residence.
The first one we visited
had original horns.
Then we checked the trophies of others
at their places of residence.
It turned out that the horns
they had on display
were made out of Styrofoam
covered in paint.
They were light, often hollow inside.
Most of the horns
brought into the country as trophies
usually disappeared within days.
[Karol Wolnicki]
We could be talking about
tens of millions of zlotys
that were fed into the black market.
We were terrified by the possible scale
of these practices.
Illegal rhino horn trade in Poland...
MINISTRY OF CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENwhich at first seemed implausible,
turned out to be true.
[slow, ominous music]
JOHANNESBURG
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[male presenter 1]
Police have made another breakthrough
in their war against
the illegal rhino horn trade.
Officers have seized
more than 30 pieces of rhino horn
at O.R. Tambo International Airport.
[female presenter 1] Police seized
over 40 kilograms of rhino horn.
Two Vietnamese men were arrested.
[male presenter 2] Rhino poaching
often involves local poachers
and international criminal syndicates,
who smuggle the horns across borders.
[female presenter 2] Last year, 499 rhinos
were killed across South Africa.
[footsteps]
Rhino horn has been prized in
Southeast Asia and China for centuries.
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISYou've seen rhino populations in China,
along the Yangtze River,
which were wiped out
because of demand for horn.
Much of the horn was going to Vietnam.
Why Vietnam?
This was a country
that had picked itself up
from the incredible damage
wrought by the Vietnam War,
and had rebuilt itself
into a rising economic powerhouse.
There were people with money
that could be spent.
You had, for instance, a story
starting to do the rounds in Hanoi,
that a senior Communist Party official
had been diagnosed with cancer.
He'd begun taking a mixture of
ground rhino horn and rice wine,
and immediately
his condition was reversed.
And that story took on different forms.
Sometimes, it was an army general,
sometimes, a retired Prime Minister,
but it was always a senior official,
who'd been cured.
[ominous music intensifies]
In our understanding, rhino horn
is made out of the same material
as your fingernails and hair.
We would believe that
eating our nails would keep us healthy.
[William Fowlds] That's what created
the big problem for South Africa.
We had this massive exponential growth
in the illegal value of rhino horn
that obviously stimulated a huge demand
for poachers to kill these horns,
and for these horns to then go through
organised criminal networks,
back into the markets in Southeast Asia.
[Julian Rademayer]
I was an investigative journalist.
I'd also then delved into organised crime.
Around that time
that the rhino poaching crisis
was taking off in South Africa,
in some ways, at the time,
the prices that were being paid...
more than gold, more than cocaine.
I was intrigued about who were the people
behind this, what was driving this.
It pulled me into it.
[ominous music continues]
One of the most destructive networks
that emerged at that time
was a network called
the Xaysavang Network.
The mastermind was a guy called
Vixay Keosavang who lived in Laos.
He'd served in the military
at a senior level.
He had ties to military intelligence
in Laos and also in Vietnam.
He sent a group of people to South Africa.
They were offered
the opportunity to hunt rhinos.
Legally shoot an animal,
get the permits, get everything there.
To take the trophies back to Laos,
Vietnam, and Thailand.
That would give them the opportunity
to sell this on the black market.
That operation was led by someone
called Chumlong Lemtongthai.
He'd grown up fairly poor in Bangkok.
He'd found work in the wildlife trade.
He was regarded as reliable,
but he also had expensive taste.
This was someone who liked
drinking Hennessy cognac,
smoking imported cigars.
He liked collecting these pistols
that he'd play with
in front of his webcam in Bangkok.
He'd strike gangster poses
with these coloured pistols.
What the Thai network initially did,
was they'd fly hunters in from Thailand.
People they recruited off the streets.
By and large, they'd bring over men.
The Customs Authority became suspicious
of these groups of Thai men
that were coming through.
It also cost money.
One of the people
in the Xaysavang Network found
what he thought was the perfect plan.
So he was cruising around to strip clubs,
massage parlours and brothels
where very often young Thai women
had been trafficked from Thailand
to work in the sex industry
in South Africa.
"All I need is your passport.
Give me your passport, you can go.
We'll pay you a couple of hundred grand,
a couple of thousand grand."
They took the passports,
and those passports were used
to apply for hunting permits.
You see these photographs of young women
in white sports shoes,
with pink jerseys on, bright-red clothing,
standing there with rifles
that almost dwarfed them in size.
A .375 hunting rifle.
And it's pretty clear that they are
not capable of carrying out these hunts.
In rare cases, they actually
shot the animals themselves.
In pretty much every single one
of the Xaysavang cases
the rhino would be shot
by a professional hunter.
This is the video of the pseudo-hunt that
was carried out by the Xaysavang Network.
You see Chumlong Lemtongthai there.
He's holding the rifle.
Then he hands the rifle to someone.
We don't know who it is yet.
That's Harry C... [beep], a professional
hunter and the tracker on the farm.
He's the tracker.
It's very clear.
The person who was
issued the permit that day
to carry out the hunt
at no stage holds a rifle,
nor does he fire a shot.
The hunting register was later signed
by the person to whose name
the permit was issued,
but he wasn't part of that hunt.
So, that's again part of the fraud.
[loud gunshot]
And then the first shot.
[rhino whimpering]
That's the rhino that's been hit.
Another shot.
I think what really shocks people
about this video is just...
This is butchery, it's not hunting.
This is how a hunt
could be carried out, you know...
The aim is to minimise suffering,
the aim is to...
get the kill done as quickly as possible.
Man shoots at point blank.
Still alive.
[man speaking in Thai]
"Is that one too low?," he asks.
No, he says, he's gone.
Except the rhino wasn't gone.
[man speaking Thai]
He asks, "Is he dead?"
It's pretty clear he's not dead.
You can see he's still breathing.
[grunts]
Yeah.
Then he turns and there you see that's
the guy who's meant to be the hunter.
There's Chumlong, smiling and laughing.
I hate this video,
I mean I've seen it so many times,
but it's not the easiest thing to watch.
Because it's just so pointless.
What's it ultimately all about?
It's about a fraud
supplying rhino horn to this network.
Supplying as many of these animals
they can line up to shoot them.
[distant gunshots
overlapping with shutter clicks]
[ominous music neds]
EASTERN CAPE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
My name is Dr William Fowlds.
I work as a wildlife veterinarian
in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
[indistinct conversation]
We will bring in a team of veterinarians
who are here learning about conservation,
but also contributing
towards conservation.
The purpose of the exercise today
is to change or fit a new collar. Natalie?
We're fitting a new tracking device
on a male white rhino.
- Tell us about him.
- [Natalie] He's about eight.
He actually lost his collar
a few months ago.
It just ripped off. We think he was
fighting with another young bull.
We just want to refit it on him.
Scott gets the best job.
He's got faecal samples.
Parva's going to do
blood samples, please.
Christy's going to wake up.
Buddy, you're going to do multivitamins.
I think that covers most of those jobs.
I'm going to be doing
the collar with Natalie.
Um... And obviously,
monitoring the anaesthetic.
Courtney and I will just keep tabs on
temperature, pulse, respiration,
and then we'll get information from KME
on the quality of the anaesthetic.
Okay, as soon as the chopper gets here,
we're on our way.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[gentle instrumental music]
[radio chatter continues]
[William Fowlds] My family have been
on this land for five generations.
When I was born here in the 1970s,
there were no rhino left.
So growing up as a child here,
there was no opportunity to see rhino,
let alone work with rhino.
KARIEGA RESERVE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[slow tribal-inspired music]
My name is Lindy Sutherland,
and I'm one of the family owners
of Kariega Game Reserve.
Kariega Game Reserve was started
by my father 35 years ago.
Twenty three different farms
have come together
to create an 11,500-hectare wilderness.
We've reintroduced all the wild animals.
[distant bird calls]
[William Fowlds] We brought back giraffe,
zebra, buffalo, and amazing animals,
but there was something different
about bringing back the dinosaurs.
These prehistoric creatures
that really made our old farms
feel like we were really rewilding.
They have an incredible presence
on the landscape,
but they also have an ecological role.
[Lindy Sutherland] When you spend time
with rhino in their natural environment,
you learn what dedicated mothers they are.
They care for their young so attentively,
and more than that,
they're incredibly social.
They love each other's company.
The sounds they make,
the way they call each other,
it's this gentle meowing almost,
when they are looking for each other
in the wild.
They're protective.
When you're working on, maybe,
a younger rhino, a three-year-old,
you have to dart that three-year-old,
and the mother's in the vicinity,
she will not leave that site.
She will move around in a circle.
But there's also a knowing in that mother
that we're helping that child.
CEO OF THE KARIEGA FOUNDATION
She's not aggressive, she's just there.
There's just a wisdom and an intelligence,
that we as humans will never understand.
You can liken it to whales,
to dolphins, to elephants.
Rhino fill that same space.
[William Fowlds]
In the early days of rewilding,
we had an amazing almost
ten years of just no poaching, no risk.
VETERINARIAN
We weren't spending on security because
there was no one coming to kill them.
[Lindy Sutherland] Rhino were first
introduced to Kariega in 2004.
And if you think about it,
five years later,
we were suddenly under attack.
[scoffs]
We didn't have advanced
anti-poaching technology,
so we were like lambs at the slaughter.
[William Fowlds]
We've lost a significant amount of rhino,
and our rhino populations are in decline,
especially white rhino.
In some parts of the country,
they're actually becoming
almost exterminated now.
[slow, ominous music]
[Lindy Sutherland] It came to a crescendo
on the 2nd of March 2012.
Poachers came onto the reserve
and they took three rhino in one night.
And we called the vet,
Dr. Will Fowlds, to the scene.
Will, a friend of mine,
was driving out here expecting
to euthanize the animals.
But he gave them the antidote first.
[William Fowlds] It was an absolutely
horrific scene to come across.
You could see all of them had their faces
hacked while they were still alive
by all the blood
and the carnage in that area.
We tried to save Thandi and Temba.
We pulled everything that we knew.
We got colleagues
from around the country to help us.
- It's okay. Can I come closer?
- [rhino growling]
Okay, okay. There we go, very good.
That's good!
[William Fowlds]
After 24 days we lost Temba.
And that was probably
the darkest day of my life.
Incredibly tragic event.
Sadly, for most rhino,
there is no happy ending.
But Thandi, somehow, managed to
pull through against all odds
and she survived.
She had significant internal trauma,
not just her facial trauma,
that she had to recover from.
[sad, melancholic music]
[William Fowlds] We ended up
losing up to 1200 rhino per year.
Those are the ones we counted.
There are many hundreds if not thousands
of rhino that are just missing.
They're just gone.
We've never counted them,
we've never found them.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[woman] We're going to wait for you before
we put the dart in, so please move.
Copy.
[slow tribal-inspired music]
[indistinct conversation]
[William Fowlds] Okay.
Let's keep you down.
Can we get the pulse oxygen on?
See if you can use that bottom.
He's run a long way so we're going
to put water on him to cool him down.
- [William Fowlds] One, two, three.
- [people grunting]
[William Fowlds] One, two, three.
A bit more push. One, two, three. Okay.
Back a little bit, please.
Back a bit.
Okay, there we go.
Now we can push all the way.
[Natalie] Yeah, back legs.
[William Fowlds]
The importance of these devices
is that they, for the first time,
have given us information immediately,
24-7, on what is happening to this animal.
It's extremely important
for anti-poaching measures
that we have a way to know
if he is in trouble.
We call these "Apple Watches for Rhino"
because they really do watch over them
and give us immediate information
about their behaviour and their safety.
So obviously it's Rhino 44.
Diane, we need the machine on, please.
Use that ear there.
Give it a good rub, please.
I don't think it is.
Just double check heart rate?
Right, so we should see a change.
See how this horn wobbles on their faces?
There's no bone in here
attaching it to the skull.
It's sitting on a pad
of fibrous connective tissue.
When they poach these animals,
they cut them here.
Their whole face comes off.
It's just horrific.
We're happy with his temperature.
His blood colour has been good.
We've fitted the collar.
Just confirmed we've done vitamins.
We've treated both darts. We've taken
blood samples. We've taken faecal samples.
[William Fowlds] So as soon as you had
this high value demand for the product,
the money started
to corrupt other systems.
But this high value meant that
people who wanted to turn
a legitimate hunting system
into a highly profitable crime,
they now had that opportunity to do that.
[ominous ambient tones]
[Paul O'Sullivan] The legislation means
that a person can hunt a rhino
in South Africa,
but can only do it once a year.
You can only hunt one.
RETIRED POLICE OFFICER
DETECTIVE
You can't get a permit for ten rhinos.
There'd be no rhinos left.
[William Fowlds]
Chumlong, and obviously his boss,
were responsible
for not one rhino, not ten rhinos,
but maybe hundreds of rhinos.
They opened up a door
that I think not just
they were involved in,
but other people started to follow.
[slow, ominous music]
[Paul O'Sullivan] These pseudo-hunters,
they're not real hunters.
So the whole thing,
everything about it was criminal.
From start to finish.
I probably spent two years
investigating all of this.
In one of the letters
that Chumlong Lemtongthai sent,
he wants to shoot 15 rhinos a month.
"I will pay this and this and this."
And he signs it. Hello!
So that was also
his very incriminating evidence.
He was selling this stuff
for maybe USD 40,000 a kilo.
So he was making a big fat profit.
[music intensifies]
[Julian Rademeyer]
He lived in this fantasy world
where he saw himself as kind of
international criminal mastermind.
Which he wasn't
because he made the fatal flaw
of documenting every one
of the criminal transactions they did
with a camera
and by keeping the documents.
He did what no criminal
in their right mind should ever do
and took pictures
of every single crime they committed.
When Chumlong
came back to South Africa,
they were waiting for him
at the airport, they detained him.
They took the laptop away from him.
Then they began analysing that evidence.
There were thousands of pictures.
Every hunt, every permit issued.
There were emails on the Gmail account
which were sent with the passports
of people they were using as hunters.
[shutter clicks]
[judge] I don't see any difference
from what the accused has done
to an action of a poacher.
Shooting was not for trophy hunting,
but specifically
to be involved in horn trading.
I don't want to see a situation
where my grandchildren
will actually only be able to see a rhino
in the newspaper or on a photo,
without being able to go to a park
or a zoo to touch a rhino.
But I think it's time
that the Asian people
should actually get a clear message
that the South Africans are not going to
allow such particular things to happen.
Sentence altogether is about 40 years.
The accused is hereby sentenced
to undergo 40 years in prison.
[male assistant] All rise!
[Julian Rademeyer]
The authorities at that stage
didn't have a centralized permit database.
They couldn't track the issuing
of rhino hunting permits in real time.
That allowed these hunts to continue
for the better part of a decade.
And at the end of that decade
they implemented, effectively, a ban
on hunters from Vietnam, Thailand,
China, and various other places.
Um... But syndicates keep evolving.
The next thing,
you start seeing fluctuation in hunters
from the Czech Republic, from Poland.
[slow, ominous music]
PRAGUE
THE CZECH REPUBLIC
[indistinct airport PA message]
[Pavel Kuchynka]
In terms of illegal rhino horn trade,
we were alarmed by an error
in veterinary records.
Instead of indicating Czechia,
the perps put down the actual
country of destination - Vietnam.
There was a ban on rhino horn imports
from South Africa in force in Vietnam,
so they used Czech Republic
as a transit country.
They usually involved a pseudo-hunter,
who was offered
a free trip to South Africa.
Most of these people
had no hunting experience.
We strived to expose
how the criminal group operated.
It was a group of Vietnamese nationals
functioning in the local
Vietnamese market.
[Pavla hov] An interesting phenomenon.
It's like little Vietnam.
We call that place "Little Hanoi."
There are around
10,000 Vietnamese traders there.
They have Vietnamese schools,
kindergartens, and hospitals.
It's like a country within a country.
All sorts of companies there organise
the transport of goods to Vietnam.
This channel was often used
for smuggling contraband.
We first discovered
a group of pseudo-hunters,
whose names were used
in import operations.
The storage space was rented a Czech woman
from Dub in northern Czechia.
A Vietnamese trader managed the operation.
People subject
to debt enforcement proceedings
don't really go hunting in South Africa.
We screened all these hunters.
There were 75 of them.
More than three-fourths of them
no longer had the horns.
We later tried to convince
our colleagues from Slovakia, Poland,
and other European countries
to screen hunters among their citizens,
and find all those who had hunted rhinos.
WARSAW
POLAND
[Karol Wolnicki] Notifications
from the neighbouring Czechia
drove us to look into the matter here.
We gathered all the information we had.
We directed the case
to the Police Headquarters,
with a request to verify
if there had been
any illegal rhino horn trade taking place.
[slow, ominous music]
[Andrzej Kepel] When we started asking
what happened to the horns
that were brought into Poland,
it turned out that they were disappearing.
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki] We started
visiting the hunters one by one.
Wherever we checked,
we practically hit the jackpot.
The horns were gone,
and the guy couldn't talk straight.
All of that showed me
that I was going in the right direction.
We reach this guy
who doesn't have the horns.
He starts explaining what had happened
to them and who took them over.
[ominous ambient tones]
That's how we found
the main perpetrator, Grzegorz P.
He managed a hunting office for years.
He also prepared hunting trophies.
And he organised trips to Africa
to hunt for various animals.
As he explained to us,
the first persons he went hunting with
were people
from his immediate surroundings.
These people never before
participated in hunting trips to Africa,
and probably couldn't even afford that.
He personally paid for their trips.
Once they were there,
he even shot for some of them.
Grzegorz P. admitted to
organizing 23 pseudo-hunts.
He is waiting to be sentenced.
The prosecution estimated
that the black market value
of the 125 kilograms
of rhino horns he obtained
was nearly 25 million zoty.
In those years,
about 60 Polish hunters
participated in rhino hunts.
This could mean about 120 rhino horns
were brought into our country.
The price for rhino horn fluctuated
around USD 13,000
to USD 27,000 per pound.
Tens of millions of zlotys
could have been pumped this way
into black markets.
Thirty-four people were
under investigation.
DISTRICT PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE
IN OPOLE
Most of them hunters.
The group included Vietnamese nationals
who initiated the criminal activity.
They organised everything,
and facilitated sales of these trophies
in the black market.
The trial of some of the hunters
has been ongoing
in a Warsaw court since 2022.
[judge] Do you know what this is about?
[accused man] Yes. A rhino.
[judge] Rhinos.
Paszek offered me
participation in a rhino hunt
at a bargain price.
He mentioned there will be
about a 50% discount.
The price was still high, it was
supposed to be round 35,000 dollars.
Shortly before the trip he said
that the price would be even lower.
The condition was
that he would keep the rhino horn.
And I could keep the hide.
That's basically what happened.
- I never expected to have such problems.
- [judge] What were you supposed to get?
The original horn or some copy?
What were the specifics?
I was supposed to get a copy.
That's why I didn't have to pay
for the hunting of the rhino.
Mr Paszek took the original horn with him.
And gave the hunters plastic ones instead.
An entire display piece.
I have it at home.
It doesn't have the original horn,
only a plastic one.
It makes no difference to me.
I don't need the real thing.
The trophy looks great
with the plastic horn.
Most Polish hunters who illegally disposed
of trophies admitted guilt.
The courts conditionally discontinued
their cases and imposed fines.
As a result, the hunters
retained their firearm permits.
The worst punishment for them would be
to have their gun licences revoked.
But that hasn't happened to this day yet.
Now, things are as they were,
and everyone's happy.
They keep going on hunting trips
and enjoying their hobby.
They're making their dream come true
by capturing the best possible trophy.
[onimous music with drums]
[gunshot]
[footsteps]
[gunshot]
[gunshot]
[gunshots]
[hunter 1] It was still standing
after the first shot.
[hunter 2] Great job!
[hunter 3] You knocked down
the second one lik a pro.
[hunter 2] I aimed at the shoulder blade.
[hunter 3] Just to be sure.
They're shaking hands, high-fiving...
I've actually never seen
footage like this.
It's...
[sighs]
It's devastating.
[Lindy Sutherland]
People just need to wake up.
Honestly, it just makes me so angry...
Just... Just be good! Just be kind!
Just make the right choice.
How hard is that?
To just be a decent person.
Surely, it should not be so hard
to just be a decent person.
[indistinct convsersation]
[Lindy Sutherland]
I hope that through this production
maybe this footage reaches some
of the people who participated in this
and they can just pause for a moment
and reflect, and maybe change.
Maybe just decide, "I made a mistake,
this is not who I want to be."
"Maybe this is not what I want to do."
"Maybe I'd like my legacy
to be something more positive."
Something that has contributed
to the planet, not just taken life.
- [slow, gentle music]
- [birds chirping]
[Lindy Sutherland] The video that we saw,
that was not an old animal.
That was an animal in his prime.
In my mind and my understanding,
when permits are issued
for ethical hunting,
you would need to select an animal
that is no longer reproductive,
whether a female or a male.
It would be an older rhino who's reaching
the end of their lifespan anyway.
And we've had the full benefits
of his or her reproductive years.
That would make sense to me.
I would have no ethical problem with that.
I mean, look,
I would still struggle with it,
but I wouldn't...
We have to accept that ethical hunting
is part of conservation.
That is not the crime.
The crime is taking the wrong animal
and then on selling the horn
into a consumptive market
that we're trying to change,
we're trying to stop.
That's killing an animal
and driving it towards extinction.
[slow tribal-inspired music]
EASTERN CAPE PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[Pelham Jones] Africa have a set of laws
that allow private people to own land
and to own wildlife.
What it has done
in a situation like South Africa,
it's grown our population of rhino,
so that more than 60%
of this country's rhino
now belong to private people.
The only reason why we own rhino
is because either
you're passionate in conservation
or you're absolutely crazy.
Because of the incredibly high risk
of the rhino being poached and killed.
We're not doing it for money
because it's impossible to make money
from rhino conservation
in South Africa today.
My name is Pelham Jones
and I've been involved with
rhino conservation for 30-35 years.
We have sadly lost two rhino
on this reserve.
In total, we've arrested 34 poachers.
These were armed gangs
coming in with the intention
to come and kill our rhino.
We have to not only be
rhino conservationists.
We also have to be soldiers.
Rhino soldiers.
[music ends]
Julian is right, sir.
If you are ready to go,
then we can go for the first one.
I don't know if Adams has briefed you,
but there's some animals
basically due north of us.
And then, Adams...
[rhythmic, mysterious music]
Good. Okay!
And we're going to dart some rhino!
- [Julian] All right, you guys hear me?
- Julian, we copy.
[Julian] We've got a rhino.
You guys can head here towards the east.
Okay, we're loading up, we're on our way.
I think there's some up ahead.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[indistinct radio chatter]
Okay, we copy that. We are mobile.
- Is the dart in, Julian?
- Yeah, dart's in.
[Julian] Y ou can come forward
and pull the next one that turns left.
[Pelham Jones] Copy.
[Julian] Pelham, just go forward.
[Pelham Jones]
His eye might be open on the other side.
[Pelham Jones] I need another mask.
[Julian] Okay.
The dart caught him in the fat,
so it takes longer for it to work.
There we go.
[Julian speaking Afrikaans]
[saw buzzing]
[Pelham Jones] By dehorning the rhino
we are reducing the amount of horn
available to the poachers.
The less amount of horn on the animal,
the less probability it is
that this animal is going to be poached.
For that reason, even though
it's a very small piece on this back horn,
we will still rather remove it.
[saw stops]
[Julian] Lift the head
and you can pull that out.
[Pelham Jones] Two, three.
And another two, three.
- Got it!
- Okay.
[Julian] Brilliant! Okay, guys!
Thanks, Pelham.
- Went well. Glad we could do this.
- I'm disappearing, now.
[Pelham Jones] Thank you.
[indistinct conversations]
[gentle music]
[Pelham Jones] The dead animal is worth
much more than when they are alive now.
And that equation will equal extinction.
It has to.
KARIEGA RESERVE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[slow tribal-inspired music]
[William Fowlds] Today, we did go
have a look, see what we can find.
But it just got too overgrown.
I'm pretty sure she is there,
but we just don't know where.
Because the last was Reception Dam.
They tend to go down the valley
quite often.
We're hoping for the best.
Come on! Come on, Queen Thandi!
Grace us with your presence.
Three years after her poaching incident,
in January 2015,
she surprised the world
by giving birth to her first calf,
a little girl.
That was called Tembi in honour of Temba,
and as a beacon of hope for her species.
Her second calf was born
when my dad passed away.
And...
Sorry, it's always a little bit emotional.
We were gathered before his funeral.
I... I got a message
from the anti-poaching unit
to say Thandi's given birth.
We kind of looked at each other
and said, if it's a boy,
he's got to be called Colin,
which is my dad's name.
So, that was a moment
where everyone paused
and felt the sense of accomplishment
that saving just one rhino
had already brought two back.
And, since then, Thandi has given birth
to a calf every two years.
She's an incredible mother
and breeding cow.
She's now left a legacy of five rhino,
five calves and two grand calves.
- [Lindy] What's that?
- [Will] I see it. I'm just hoping.
- [Lindy] Is that not an anthill?
- [Will] I'm not sure.
[Lindy] It's not moving, but it does look
like a curve of a back.
[gentle, instrumental music]
[Lindy Sutherland]
Oh, my God. Such a star.
[William Fowlds] There's Thandi.
In the eastern part of the valley.
- [birds chirping]
- [Lindy Sutherland] She's just incredible.
Come on. Come on.
[gentle, uplifting music]
Oh, she's...
You can never get enough of seeing Thandi.
She likes voices.
We should talk and see if...
She's definitely curious.
She's turned around full circle
and she's still looking at us.
It's very difficult for us,
for ordinary people,
to talk about poaching
because it's just...
It's so horrific and gruesome,
you can't even go there.
But because she's had a happy ending...
She's been a huge spokesperson
for her species globally.
[William Fowlds]
We have a chance to turn this around.
We cannot do it alone.
We need the international community
to understand the mechanics of this crisis
and to help us
wherever they can to stop it.
Because if humans continue
to do these kind of things to animals
that are so important to our survival,
but also just so innocent
and so undeserving
of that kind of treatment,
it says a lot about
who we are as human beings,
and the pathway that we are taking
as a species on this planet.
[gentle, instrumental music]
There are
around 27,000 rhinos living on Earth.
Chumlong Lemtongthai has been released
from prison after serving 6 years.
Thandi became a mom again.
This movie contains scenes that may be
considered drastic to same viewers.
[ominous ambient tones]
[man] This is just a souvenir
that a hunter is taking back.
[footsteps on dry grass]
If they look at that in their house,
they can then think back of what
they have experienced.
People are drawn to that,
to hunt these dangerous animals.
One of the most expensive hunts
is to hunt the rhino.
[intense rhythmic music builds]
[gunshot]
[male hunter 1] You knocked down
the second one like a pro!
[male hunter 2]
I aimed at the shoulder blade.
[Karol Wolnicki] Among EU countries,
Poland was the leading country
in terms of rhinoceros hunting
in South Africa.
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki] Everybody knew
these hunters were just frontmen.
Those officials put them up
for the photos.
They knew the horns were not for them.
They just had to sign the papers
and not ask any questions.
[Julian Rademeyer]
The price for rhino horn
fluctuated around USD 30,000
to 60,000 for a kilogram.
I was intrigued about
who were the people behind this.
What was driving this.
That's what really pulled me into this.
You see Chumlong Lemtongthai.
He's holding a rifle.
[William Fowlds]
Chumlong and his boss
were responsible
for not one rhino, not ten rhinos,
but, maybe, hundreds of rhinos.
[Paul O'Sullivan] These pseudo-hunters,
they're not real hunters.
So the whole thing,
everything about it, was criminal,
from start to finish.
It's not just about a piece of horn.
It's not just about the rhino's nose.
I don't think this is about the rhino.
For me, the rhino is a symbol.
- Is the dart in, Julian?
- [over radio] Yeah, dart's in.
[helicopter blades whirring overhead]
[intense rhythmic music continues]
[Lindy Sutherland]
Rhino have been under threat always.
They're critically endangered.
They're on the brink of extinction.
And are being completely persecuted
and brutally attacked for their horns.
It's just terrible.
[music ends abruptly]
[silent gunshot]
BLOODY TROPHY
THE ILLEGAL RHINO HORN TRADE
[gentle instrumental music]
GRABICE, POLAND
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki]
I've been a police officer since 1991.
I've been practically
through all the levels on the force.
I worked in
the criminal investigation department
of the Opole Provincial Police HQ.
My superior told me about the case.
He said I would be
leading an investigation
on rhino horn smuggling.
INVESTIGATIVE POLICE OFFICER
And I focused on the job.
We went to the county police HQ
and took over the investigation.
At first it seemed it was something
we could close within a month.
It turned out, the case wasn't so simple.
With the prosecutor we decided to expand
the investigation over the whole country,
and the case started to grow.
[Andrzej Kepel]
We noticed an alarming regularity.
An exceptionally large number
of Polish hunters
could afford to hunt for rhinos.
The price of that is considerable.
ENDANGERED SPECIES EXPERAnnually, two Germans, one Spaniard,
three Americans, one Britisher,
one Dane, and 15 Poles can afford it.
[subtle, mysterious music]
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki]
We started visiting hunters
who were said to have such trophies
in their places of residence.
The first one we visited
had original horns.
Then we checked the trophies of others
at their places of residence.
It turned out that the horns
they had on display
were made out of Styrofoam
covered in paint.
They were light, often hollow inside.
Most of the horns
brought into the country as trophies
usually disappeared within days.
[Karol Wolnicki]
We could be talking about
tens of millions of zlotys
that were fed into the black market.
We were terrified by the possible scale
of these practices.
Illegal rhino horn trade in Poland...
MINISTRY OF CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENwhich at first seemed implausible,
turned out to be true.
[slow, ominous music]
JOHANNESBURG
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[male presenter 1]
Police have made another breakthrough
in their war against
the illegal rhino horn trade.
Officers have seized
more than 30 pieces of rhino horn
at O.R. Tambo International Airport.
[female presenter 1] Police seized
over 40 kilograms of rhino horn.
Two Vietnamese men were arrested.
[male presenter 2] Rhino poaching
often involves local poachers
and international criminal syndicates,
who smuggle the horns across borders.
[female presenter 2] Last year, 499 rhinos
were killed across South Africa.
[footsteps]
Rhino horn has been prized in
Southeast Asia and China for centuries.
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISYou've seen rhino populations in China,
along the Yangtze River,
which were wiped out
because of demand for horn.
Much of the horn was going to Vietnam.
Why Vietnam?
This was a country
that had picked itself up
from the incredible damage
wrought by the Vietnam War,
and had rebuilt itself
into a rising economic powerhouse.
There were people with money
that could be spent.
You had, for instance, a story
starting to do the rounds in Hanoi,
that a senior Communist Party official
had been diagnosed with cancer.
He'd begun taking a mixture of
ground rhino horn and rice wine,
and immediately
his condition was reversed.
And that story took on different forms.
Sometimes, it was an army general,
sometimes, a retired Prime Minister,
but it was always a senior official,
who'd been cured.
[ominous music intensifies]
In our understanding, rhino horn
is made out of the same material
as your fingernails and hair.
We would believe that
eating our nails would keep us healthy.
[William Fowlds] That's what created
the big problem for South Africa.
We had this massive exponential growth
in the illegal value of rhino horn
that obviously stimulated a huge demand
for poachers to kill these horns,
and for these horns to then go through
organised criminal networks,
back into the markets in Southeast Asia.
[Julian Rademayer]
I was an investigative journalist.
I'd also then delved into organised crime.
Around that time
that the rhino poaching crisis
was taking off in South Africa,
in some ways, at the time,
the prices that were being paid...
more than gold, more than cocaine.
I was intrigued about who were the people
behind this, what was driving this.
It pulled me into it.
[ominous music continues]
One of the most destructive networks
that emerged at that time
was a network called
the Xaysavang Network.
The mastermind was a guy called
Vixay Keosavang who lived in Laos.
He'd served in the military
at a senior level.
He had ties to military intelligence
in Laos and also in Vietnam.
He sent a group of people to South Africa.
They were offered
the opportunity to hunt rhinos.
Legally shoot an animal,
get the permits, get everything there.
To take the trophies back to Laos,
Vietnam, and Thailand.
That would give them the opportunity
to sell this on the black market.
That operation was led by someone
called Chumlong Lemtongthai.
He'd grown up fairly poor in Bangkok.
He'd found work in the wildlife trade.
He was regarded as reliable,
but he also had expensive taste.
This was someone who liked
drinking Hennessy cognac,
smoking imported cigars.
He liked collecting these pistols
that he'd play with
in front of his webcam in Bangkok.
He'd strike gangster poses
with these coloured pistols.
What the Thai network initially did,
was they'd fly hunters in from Thailand.
People they recruited off the streets.
By and large, they'd bring over men.
The Customs Authority became suspicious
of these groups of Thai men
that were coming through.
It also cost money.
One of the people
in the Xaysavang Network found
what he thought was the perfect plan.
So he was cruising around to strip clubs,
massage parlours and brothels
where very often young Thai women
had been trafficked from Thailand
to work in the sex industry
in South Africa.
"All I need is your passport.
Give me your passport, you can go.
We'll pay you a couple of hundred grand,
a couple of thousand grand."
They took the passports,
and those passports were used
to apply for hunting permits.
You see these photographs of young women
in white sports shoes,
with pink jerseys on, bright-red clothing,
standing there with rifles
that almost dwarfed them in size.
A .375 hunting rifle.
And it's pretty clear that they are
not capable of carrying out these hunts.
In rare cases, they actually
shot the animals themselves.
In pretty much every single one
of the Xaysavang cases
the rhino would be shot
by a professional hunter.
This is the video of the pseudo-hunt that
was carried out by the Xaysavang Network.
You see Chumlong Lemtongthai there.
He's holding the rifle.
Then he hands the rifle to someone.
We don't know who it is yet.
That's Harry C... [beep], a professional
hunter and the tracker on the farm.
He's the tracker.
It's very clear.
The person who was
issued the permit that day
to carry out the hunt
at no stage holds a rifle,
nor does he fire a shot.
The hunting register was later signed
by the person to whose name
the permit was issued,
but he wasn't part of that hunt.
So, that's again part of the fraud.
[loud gunshot]
And then the first shot.
[rhino whimpering]
That's the rhino that's been hit.
Another shot.
I think what really shocks people
about this video is just...
This is butchery, it's not hunting.
This is how a hunt
could be carried out, you know...
The aim is to minimise suffering,
the aim is to...
get the kill done as quickly as possible.
Man shoots at point blank.
Still alive.
[man speaking in Thai]
"Is that one too low?," he asks.
No, he says, he's gone.
Except the rhino wasn't gone.
[man speaking Thai]
He asks, "Is he dead?"
It's pretty clear he's not dead.
You can see he's still breathing.
[grunts]
Yeah.
Then he turns and there you see that's
the guy who's meant to be the hunter.
There's Chumlong, smiling and laughing.
I hate this video,
I mean I've seen it so many times,
but it's not the easiest thing to watch.
Because it's just so pointless.
What's it ultimately all about?
It's about a fraud
supplying rhino horn to this network.
Supplying as many of these animals
they can line up to shoot them.
[distant gunshots
overlapping with shutter clicks]
[ominous music neds]
EASTERN CAPE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
My name is Dr William Fowlds.
I work as a wildlife veterinarian
in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
[indistinct conversation]
We will bring in a team of veterinarians
who are here learning about conservation,
but also contributing
towards conservation.
The purpose of the exercise today
is to change or fit a new collar. Natalie?
We're fitting a new tracking device
on a male white rhino.
- Tell us about him.
- [Natalie] He's about eight.
He actually lost his collar
a few months ago.
It just ripped off. We think he was
fighting with another young bull.
We just want to refit it on him.
Scott gets the best job.
He's got faecal samples.
Parva's going to do
blood samples, please.
Christy's going to wake up.
Buddy, you're going to do multivitamins.
I think that covers most of those jobs.
I'm going to be doing
the collar with Natalie.
Um... And obviously,
monitoring the anaesthetic.
Courtney and I will just keep tabs on
temperature, pulse, respiration,
and then we'll get information from KME
on the quality of the anaesthetic.
Okay, as soon as the chopper gets here,
we're on our way.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[gentle instrumental music]
[radio chatter continues]
[William Fowlds] My family have been
on this land for five generations.
When I was born here in the 1970s,
there were no rhino left.
So growing up as a child here,
there was no opportunity to see rhino,
let alone work with rhino.
KARIEGA RESERVE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[slow tribal-inspired music]
My name is Lindy Sutherland,
and I'm one of the family owners
of Kariega Game Reserve.
Kariega Game Reserve was started
by my father 35 years ago.
Twenty three different farms
have come together
to create an 11,500-hectare wilderness.
We've reintroduced all the wild animals.
[distant bird calls]
[William Fowlds] We brought back giraffe,
zebra, buffalo, and amazing animals,
but there was something different
about bringing back the dinosaurs.
These prehistoric creatures
that really made our old farms
feel like we were really rewilding.
They have an incredible presence
on the landscape,
but they also have an ecological role.
[Lindy Sutherland] When you spend time
with rhino in their natural environment,
you learn what dedicated mothers they are.
They care for their young so attentively,
and more than that,
they're incredibly social.
They love each other's company.
The sounds they make,
the way they call each other,
it's this gentle meowing almost,
when they are looking for each other
in the wild.
They're protective.
When you're working on, maybe,
a younger rhino, a three-year-old,
you have to dart that three-year-old,
and the mother's in the vicinity,
she will not leave that site.
She will move around in a circle.
But there's also a knowing in that mother
that we're helping that child.
CEO OF THE KARIEGA FOUNDATION
She's not aggressive, she's just there.
There's just a wisdom and an intelligence,
that we as humans will never understand.
You can liken it to whales,
to dolphins, to elephants.
Rhino fill that same space.
[William Fowlds]
In the early days of rewilding,
we had an amazing almost
ten years of just no poaching, no risk.
VETERINARIAN
We weren't spending on security because
there was no one coming to kill them.
[Lindy Sutherland] Rhino were first
introduced to Kariega in 2004.
And if you think about it,
five years later,
we were suddenly under attack.
[scoffs]
We didn't have advanced
anti-poaching technology,
so we were like lambs at the slaughter.
[William Fowlds]
We've lost a significant amount of rhino,
and our rhino populations are in decline,
especially white rhino.
In some parts of the country,
they're actually becoming
almost exterminated now.
[slow, ominous music]
[Lindy Sutherland] It came to a crescendo
on the 2nd of March 2012.
Poachers came onto the reserve
and they took three rhino in one night.
And we called the vet,
Dr. Will Fowlds, to the scene.
Will, a friend of mine,
was driving out here expecting
to euthanize the animals.
But he gave them the antidote first.
[William Fowlds] It was an absolutely
horrific scene to come across.
You could see all of them had their faces
hacked while they were still alive
by all the blood
and the carnage in that area.
We tried to save Thandi and Temba.
We pulled everything that we knew.
We got colleagues
from around the country to help us.
- It's okay. Can I come closer?
- [rhino growling]
Okay, okay. There we go, very good.
That's good!
[William Fowlds]
After 24 days we lost Temba.
And that was probably
the darkest day of my life.
Incredibly tragic event.
Sadly, for most rhino,
there is no happy ending.
But Thandi, somehow, managed to
pull through against all odds
and she survived.
She had significant internal trauma,
not just her facial trauma,
that she had to recover from.
[sad, melancholic music]
[William Fowlds] We ended up
losing up to 1200 rhino per year.
Those are the ones we counted.
There are many hundreds if not thousands
of rhino that are just missing.
They're just gone.
We've never counted them,
we've never found them.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[woman] We're going to wait for you before
we put the dart in, so please move.
Copy.
[slow tribal-inspired music]
[indistinct conversation]
[William Fowlds] Okay.
Let's keep you down.
Can we get the pulse oxygen on?
See if you can use that bottom.
He's run a long way so we're going
to put water on him to cool him down.
- [William Fowlds] One, two, three.
- [people grunting]
[William Fowlds] One, two, three.
A bit more push. One, two, three. Okay.
Back a little bit, please.
Back a bit.
Okay, there we go.
Now we can push all the way.
[Natalie] Yeah, back legs.
[William Fowlds]
The importance of these devices
is that they, for the first time,
have given us information immediately,
24-7, on what is happening to this animal.
It's extremely important
for anti-poaching measures
that we have a way to know
if he is in trouble.
We call these "Apple Watches for Rhino"
because they really do watch over them
and give us immediate information
about their behaviour and their safety.
So obviously it's Rhino 44.
Diane, we need the machine on, please.
Use that ear there.
Give it a good rub, please.
I don't think it is.
Just double check heart rate?
Right, so we should see a change.
See how this horn wobbles on their faces?
There's no bone in here
attaching it to the skull.
It's sitting on a pad
of fibrous connective tissue.
When they poach these animals,
they cut them here.
Their whole face comes off.
It's just horrific.
We're happy with his temperature.
His blood colour has been good.
We've fitted the collar.
Just confirmed we've done vitamins.
We've treated both darts. We've taken
blood samples. We've taken faecal samples.
[William Fowlds] So as soon as you had
this high value demand for the product,
the money started
to corrupt other systems.
But this high value meant that
people who wanted to turn
a legitimate hunting system
into a highly profitable crime,
they now had that opportunity to do that.
[ominous ambient tones]
[Paul O'Sullivan] The legislation means
that a person can hunt a rhino
in South Africa,
but can only do it once a year.
You can only hunt one.
RETIRED POLICE OFFICER
DETECTIVE
You can't get a permit for ten rhinos.
There'd be no rhinos left.
[William Fowlds]
Chumlong, and obviously his boss,
were responsible
for not one rhino, not ten rhinos,
but maybe hundreds of rhinos.
They opened up a door
that I think not just
they were involved in,
but other people started to follow.
[slow, ominous music]
[Paul O'Sullivan] These pseudo-hunters,
they're not real hunters.
So the whole thing,
everything about it was criminal.
From start to finish.
I probably spent two years
investigating all of this.
In one of the letters
that Chumlong Lemtongthai sent,
he wants to shoot 15 rhinos a month.
"I will pay this and this and this."
And he signs it. Hello!
So that was also
his very incriminating evidence.
He was selling this stuff
for maybe USD 40,000 a kilo.
So he was making a big fat profit.
[music intensifies]
[Julian Rademeyer]
He lived in this fantasy world
where he saw himself as kind of
international criminal mastermind.
Which he wasn't
because he made the fatal flaw
of documenting every one
of the criminal transactions they did
with a camera
and by keeping the documents.
He did what no criminal
in their right mind should ever do
and took pictures
of every single crime they committed.
When Chumlong
came back to South Africa,
they were waiting for him
at the airport, they detained him.
They took the laptop away from him.
Then they began analysing that evidence.
There were thousands of pictures.
Every hunt, every permit issued.
There were emails on the Gmail account
which were sent with the passports
of people they were using as hunters.
[shutter clicks]
[judge] I don't see any difference
from what the accused has done
to an action of a poacher.
Shooting was not for trophy hunting,
but specifically
to be involved in horn trading.
I don't want to see a situation
where my grandchildren
will actually only be able to see a rhino
in the newspaper or on a photo,
without being able to go to a park
or a zoo to touch a rhino.
But I think it's time
that the Asian people
should actually get a clear message
that the South Africans are not going to
allow such particular things to happen.
Sentence altogether is about 40 years.
The accused is hereby sentenced
to undergo 40 years in prison.
[male assistant] All rise!
[Julian Rademeyer]
The authorities at that stage
didn't have a centralized permit database.
They couldn't track the issuing
of rhino hunting permits in real time.
That allowed these hunts to continue
for the better part of a decade.
And at the end of that decade
they implemented, effectively, a ban
on hunters from Vietnam, Thailand,
China, and various other places.
Um... But syndicates keep evolving.
The next thing,
you start seeing fluctuation in hunters
from the Czech Republic, from Poland.
[slow, ominous music]
PRAGUE
THE CZECH REPUBLIC
[indistinct airport PA message]
[Pavel Kuchynka]
In terms of illegal rhino horn trade,
we were alarmed by an error
in veterinary records.
Instead of indicating Czechia,
the perps put down the actual
country of destination - Vietnam.
There was a ban on rhino horn imports
from South Africa in force in Vietnam,
so they used Czech Republic
as a transit country.
They usually involved a pseudo-hunter,
who was offered
a free trip to South Africa.
Most of these people
had no hunting experience.
We strived to expose
how the criminal group operated.
It was a group of Vietnamese nationals
functioning in the local
Vietnamese market.
[Pavla hov] An interesting phenomenon.
It's like little Vietnam.
We call that place "Little Hanoi."
There are around
10,000 Vietnamese traders there.
They have Vietnamese schools,
kindergartens, and hospitals.
It's like a country within a country.
All sorts of companies there organise
the transport of goods to Vietnam.
This channel was often used
for smuggling contraband.
We first discovered
a group of pseudo-hunters,
whose names were used
in import operations.
The storage space was rented a Czech woman
from Dub in northern Czechia.
A Vietnamese trader managed the operation.
People subject
to debt enforcement proceedings
don't really go hunting in South Africa.
We screened all these hunters.
There were 75 of them.
More than three-fourths of them
no longer had the horns.
We later tried to convince
our colleagues from Slovakia, Poland,
and other European countries
to screen hunters among their citizens,
and find all those who had hunted rhinos.
WARSAW
POLAND
[Karol Wolnicki] Notifications
from the neighbouring Czechia
drove us to look into the matter here.
We gathered all the information we had.
We directed the case
to the Police Headquarters,
with a request to verify
if there had been
any illegal rhino horn trade taking place.
[slow, ominous music]
[Andrzej Kepel] When we started asking
what happened to the horns
that were brought into Poland,
it turned out that they were disappearing.
[Krzysztof Ziewiecki] We started
visiting the hunters one by one.
Wherever we checked,
we practically hit the jackpot.
The horns were gone,
and the guy couldn't talk straight.
All of that showed me
that I was going in the right direction.
We reach this guy
who doesn't have the horns.
He starts explaining what had happened
to them and who took them over.
[ominous ambient tones]
That's how we found
the main perpetrator, Grzegorz P.
He managed a hunting office for years.
He also prepared hunting trophies.
And he organised trips to Africa
to hunt for various animals.
As he explained to us,
the first persons he went hunting with
were people
from his immediate surroundings.
These people never before
participated in hunting trips to Africa,
and probably couldn't even afford that.
He personally paid for their trips.
Once they were there,
he even shot for some of them.
Grzegorz P. admitted to
organizing 23 pseudo-hunts.
He is waiting to be sentenced.
The prosecution estimated
that the black market value
of the 125 kilograms
of rhino horns he obtained
was nearly 25 million zoty.
In those years,
about 60 Polish hunters
participated in rhino hunts.
This could mean about 120 rhino horns
were brought into our country.
The price for rhino horn fluctuated
around USD 13,000
to USD 27,000 per pound.
Tens of millions of zlotys
could have been pumped this way
into black markets.
Thirty-four people were
under investigation.
DISTRICT PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE
IN OPOLE
Most of them hunters.
The group included Vietnamese nationals
who initiated the criminal activity.
They organised everything,
and facilitated sales of these trophies
in the black market.
The trial of some of the hunters
has been ongoing
in a Warsaw court since 2022.
[judge] Do you know what this is about?
[accused man] Yes. A rhino.
[judge] Rhinos.
Paszek offered me
participation in a rhino hunt
at a bargain price.
He mentioned there will be
about a 50% discount.
The price was still high, it was
supposed to be round 35,000 dollars.
Shortly before the trip he said
that the price would be even lower.
The condition was
that he would keep the rhino horn.
And I could keep the hide.
That's basically what happened.
- I never expected to have such problems.
- [judge] What were you supposed to get?
The original horn or some copy?
What were the specifics?
I was supposed to get a copy.
That's why I didn't have to pay
for the hunting of the rhino.
Mr Paszek took the original horn with him.
And gave the hunters plastic ones instead.
An entire display piece.
I have it at home.
It doesn't have the original horn,
only a plastic one.
It makes no difference to me.
I don't need the real thing.
The trophy looks great
with the plastic horn.
Most Polish hunters who illegally disposed
of trophies admitted guilt.
The courts conditionally discontinued
their cases and imposed fines.
As a result, the hunters
retained their firearm permits.
The worst punishment for them would be
to have their gun licences revoked.
But that hasn't happened to this day yet.
Now, things are as they were,
and everyone's happy.
They keep going on hunting trips
and enjoying their hobby.
They're making their dream come true
by capturing the best possible trophy.
[onimous music with drums]
[gunshot]
[footsteps]
[gunshot]
[gunshot]
[gunshots]
[hunter 1] It was still standing
after the first shot.
[hunter 2] Great job!
[hunter 3] You knocked down
the second one lik a pro.
[hunter 2] I aimed at the shoulder blade.
[hunter 3] Just to be sure.
They're shaking hands, high-fiving...
I've actually never seen
footage like this.
It's...
[sighs]
It's devastating.
[Lindy Sutherland]
People just need to wake up.
Honestly, it just makes me so angry...
Just... Just be good! Just be kind!
Just make the right choice.
How hard is that?
To just be a decent person.
Surely, it should not be so hard
to just be a decent person.
[indistinct convsersation]
[Lindy Sutherland]
I hope that through this production
maybe this footage reaches some
of the people who participated in this
and they can just pause for a moment
and reflect, and maybe change.
Maybe just decide, "I made a mistake,
this is not who I want to be."
"Maybe this is not what I want to do."
"Maybe I'd like my legacy
to be something more positive."
Something that has contributed
to the planet, not just taken life.
- [slow, gentle music]
- [birds chirping]
[Lindy Sutherland] The video that we saw,
that was not an old animal.
That was an animal in his prime.
In my mind and my understanding,
when permits are issued
for ethical hunting,
you would need to select an animal
that is no longer reproductive,
whether a female or a male.
It would be an older rhino who's reaching
the end of their lifespan anyway.
And we've had the full benefits
of his or her reproductive years.
That would make sense to me.
I would have no ethical problem with that.
I mean, look,
I would still struggle with it,
but I wouldn't...
We have to accept that ethical hunting
is part of conservation.
That is not the crime.
The crime is taking the wrong animal
and then on selling the horn
into a consumptive market
that we're trying to change,
we're trying to stop.
That's killing an animal
and driving it towards extinction.
[slow tribal-inspired music]
EASTERN CAPE PROVINCE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[Pelham Jones] Africa have a set of laws
that allow private people to own land
and to own wildlife.
What it has done
in a situation like South Africa,
it's grown our population of rhino,
so that more than 60%
of this country's rhino
now belong to private people.
The only reason why we own rhino
is because either
you're passionate in conservation
or you're absolutely crazy.
Because of the incredibly high risk
of the rhino being poached and killed.
We're not doing it for money
because it's impossible to make money
from rhino conservation
in South Africa today.
My name is Pelham Jones
and I've been involved with
rhino conservation for 30-35 years.
We have sadly lost two rhino
on this reserve.
In total, we've arrested 34 poachers.
These were armed gangs
coming in with the intention
to come and kill our rhino.
We have to not only be
rhino conservationists.
We also have to be soldiers.
Rhino soldiers.
[music ends]
Julian is right, sir.
If you are ready to go,
then we can go for the first one.
I don't know if Adams has briefed you,
but there's some animals
basically due north of us.
And then, Adams...
[rhythmic, mysterious music]
Good. Okay!
And we're going to dart some rhino!
- [Julian] All right, you guys hear me?
- Julian, we copy.
[Julian] We've got a rhino.
You guys can head here towards the east.
Okay, we're loading up, we're on our way.
I think there's some up ahead.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[indistinct radio chatter]
Okay, we copy that. We are mobile.
- Is the dart in, Julian?
- Yeah, dart's in.
[Julian] Y ou can come forward
and pull the next one that turns left.
[Pelham Jones] Copy.
[Julian] Pelham, just go forward.
[Pelham Jones]
His eye might be open on the other side.
[Pelham Jones] I need another mask.
[Julian] Okay.
The dart caught him in the fat,
so it takes longer for it to work.
There we go.
[Julian speaking Afrikaans]
[saw buzzing]
[Pelham Jones] By dehorning the rhino
we are reducing the amount of horn
available to the poachers.
The less amount of horn on the animal,
the less probability it is
that this animal is going to be poached.
For that reason, even though
it's a very small piece on this back horn,
we will still rather remove it.
[saw stops]
[Julian] Lift the head
and you can pull that out.
[Pelham Jones] Two, three.
And another two, three.
- Got it!
- Okay.
[Julian] Brilliant! Okay, guys!
Thanks, Pelham.
- Went well. Glad we could do this.
- I'm disappearing, now.
[Pelham Jones] Thank you.
[indistinct conversations]
[gentle music]
[Pelham Jones] The dead animal is worth
much more than when they are alive now.
And that equation will equal extinction.
It has to.
KARIEGA RESERVE
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
[slow tribal-inspired music]
[William Fowlds] Today, we did go
have a look, see what we can find.
But it just got too overgrown.
I'm pretty sure she is there,
but we just don't know where.
Because the last was Reception Dam.
They tend to go down the valley
quite often.
We're hoping for the best.
Come on! Come on, Queen Thandi!
Grace us with your presence.
Three years after her poaching incident,
in January 2015,
she surprised the world
by giving birth to her first calf,
a little girl.
That was called Tembi in honour of Temba,
and as a beacon of hope for her species.
Her second calf was born
when my dad passed away.
And...
Sorry, it's always a little bit emotional.
We were gathered before his funeral.
I... I got a message
from the anti-poaching unit
to say Thandi's given birth.
We kind of looked at each other
and said, if it's a boy,
he's got to be called Colin,
which is my dad's name.
So, that was a moment
where everyone paused
and felt the sense of accomplishment
that saving just one rhino
had already brought two back.
And, since then, Thandi has given birth
to a calf every two years.
She's an incredible mother
and breeding cow.
She's now left a legacy of five rhino,
five calves and two grand calves.
- [Lindy] What's that?
- [Will] I see it. I'm just hoping.
- [Lindy] Is that not an anthill?
- [Will] I'm not sure.
[Lindy] It's not moving, but it does look
like a curve of a back.
[gentle, instrumental music]
[Lindy Sutherland]
Oh, my God. Such a star.
[William Fowlds] There's Thandi.
In the eastern part of the valley.
- [birds chirping]
- [Lindy Sutherland] She's just incredible.
Come on. Come on.
[gentle, uplifting music]
Oh, she's...
You can never get enough of seeing Thandi.
She likes voices.
We should talk and see if...
She's definitely curious.
She's turned around full circle
and she's still looking at us.
It's very difficult for us,
for ordinary people,
to talk about poaching
because it's just...
It's so horrific and gruesome,
you can't even go there.
But because she's had a happy ending...
She's been a huge spokesperson
for her species globally.
[William Fowlds]
We have a chance to turn this around.
We cannot do it alone.
We need the international community
to understand the mechanics of this crisis
and to help us
wherever they can to stop it.
Because if humans continue
to do these kind of things to animals
that are so important to our survival,
but also just so innocent
and so undeserving
of that kind of treatment,
it says a lot about
who we are as human beings,
and the pathway that we are taking
as a species on this planet.
[gentle, instrumental music]
There are
around 27,000 rhinos living on Earth.
Chumlong Lemtongthai has been released
from prison after serving 6 years.
Thandi became a mom again.