According to Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), a 12-year-old black rhino in Kenya’s Lake Nakuru national park was killed by poachers earlier this week.
KWS security teams, aided by the National Intelligence Service and Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), have been tracking the suspected poachers. The KWS Canine Unit was also deployed to the scene.
“In the meantime, two rangers who were on duty have been interdicted pending investigations by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations into their culpability,” KWS posted on Twitter noting that a post-mortem examination has already been conducted on the male rhino to determine to exact cause of the death.
The tragic news comes on the heels of the recent announcement by Kenya’s government that 10 of 11 rhinos had died following their relocation from the Nakuru and Nairobi national parks to Tsavo East National Park.
As previously reported by WAN, the rhinos reportedly died from stress and poisoning from drinking salty water.
As per KWS, Kenya had 20,000 rhinos in the 1970s, falling to 400 in the 1990s. In 2017, the number had risen back to 1258, 745 of them black rhinos and 510 southern white rhinos.
There are currently an estimated 5,000 black rhinos left in Africa.
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