Alive in May, Dehorned in July, Dead in November.

Poachers armed with AK47 rifles shot dead three black rhinoceroses - a species listed as the most highly endangered large mammal on Earth - on a private conservancy . Owner John Travers said the poachers evaded the armed guards surrounding the rhino at the Imire game park about 100km east of Harare and shot dead two females and a male, but left a four-week-old calf unharmed. One of the cows was two weeks away from giving birth.

He said the three animals had had their horns sawn off by wildlife veterinarians a few months ago, a tactic used with some success to deter poachers. The decision to dehorn them was taken when poachers attacked another conservancy outside Harare and shot dead three white rhino. "My assumption is that these guys were after the horns but it was dark and they couldn't see that they didn't have horns," he said.

The three were among the hundreds of black rhino rescued from the Zambezi Valley during "Operation Stronghold", a semi-military operation to fight off the poachers, and came to Imire in 1985, where they became the stock for a scientific breeding programme to build up their numbers again.

Zimbabwe in the 1980s had the largest population in Africa of black rhino, about 7 500, but a wave of poaching all over Africa - driven by demand for the horn in the Far East as a cure for fevers and a sexual stimulant and in Yemen where it was used for dagger handles - decimated the population, including Zimbabwe's. According to biologists the horn is composed of tightly compacted hair fibres, and has no other pharmacological properties.

About 1 500 of the surviving population were captured in the Zambezi Valley on Zimbabwe's northern border and taken to apparent safety in national game parks and conservancies in the interior of the country. About 500 are still left, according to wildlife experts, but they have come under increasing pressure this year.

This is an edited version from The Mail & Guardian (SA), 9 November 2007