The black rhino is nature's tank, feared by all animals. Even lions
will break off a hunt to detour around one. And yet the black rhino is
on the edge of extinction, its numbers dwindling from 100,000 at the
turn of the century, to less than 2,500 today. The reason is that in
places like Yemen, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, the rhino's
horn is more valuable than gold, so valuable that people will risk
their lives to harvest it. To deter rhino poachers, African
governments have spent millions--on helicopters, paramilitary
operations, fences and guard dogs, even relocation to protected areas.
Finally, Namibia decided to de-horn its rhino population, in a last
ditch effort to stop the slaughter. In 1991, Carol Cunningham and Joel
Berger, and their eighteen-month-old daughter Sonja, went to Namibia
to weigh the effects of de-horning on rhinos. In Horn of Darkness,
they tell the story of three years in the Namib Desert, studying
Africa's last sizable population of free-roaming black rhinos.
This is the closest most readers will come to experiencing life in
the remaining wilds of Africa. Cunningham and Berger, writing
alternate chapters, capture what it is like to leave the comforts of
civilization, to camp for months at a time in a land filled with
deadly predators, to study an animal that is reclusive, unpredictable,
and highly dangerous. The authors describe staking out water holes in
the dead of the night, creeping to within twenty-seven meters of
rhinos to photograph them, all the while keeping a lookout for hyenas,
elephants, and lions. Weaving together the historical accounts of other naturalists, a
vividly detailed look at life in the wild, and a behind-the-scenes
glimpse of scientific work and the dark side of the conservation
movement, Horn of Darkness is destined to be a classic work on the
natural world.