Animal Planet Canada is gearing up for a new mini-series that will fight the extinction of rhinos in South Africa.
The show “Battleground: Rhino Wars” documents the intense conflict that centres on the worldwide commercial demand for rhino horns – an exotic commodity that’s more valuable than gold on South Africa’s black market. The three-part series documents conflict between blood-thirsty poachers and one of South Africa’s anti-poaching units – which has recruited American armed forces to stop the illegal, lucrative trade of rhino horns. Cameras reveal a bloody war that these elite U.S. warriors are fighting, in an area where both rhinos and people are being slaughtered with increasing regularity.
The renowned Greater Kruger area of South Africa – just north of Johannesburg – is the new ground zero in a war to protect magnificent creatures on the edge of extinction. Rhinoceroses are hunted to death by poachers who will stop at nothing to kill them just to take their horns. The death toll is astonishing – each year, nearly 500 rhinos are killed, with baby rhinos and calves separated from their mothers and left to fend on their own, and more than 100 park rangers have been killed by these poachers in the battle to halt these criminals. U.S. Special Ops (Navy SEALs and a Green Beret) have been brought in to help the security forces before rhinos are brought to total extinction.
Check out “Battleground: Rhino Wars” on Animal Planet Canada September 12th at 9pm.
