A RHINOCEROS in a French zoo was shot in the head three times before having its horn sliced off with a chainsaw.
Vince, a four-year-old white rhinoceros, was found bloodied and mutilated yesterday morning by keepers at Thoiry Zoo, some 30 miles west of Paris.
One or more poachers reportedly broke into the enclosure overnight where three rhinos were housed, Le Parisien reported.
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Thoiry Zoo said on its Facebook page it believed the poachers were disturbed or their equipment broke during the incident.
The African rhino’s horn commands high prices on the black market, with about 100 killed every month in the wild.
In traditional Asian medicine it is ground into powder or tablets and is believed to have myriad life-giving properties.
France’s environment minister Segolene Royal said: “The killing of a rhinoceros at Thoiry is criminal. It is time countries outlaw the trade in ivory and horn as I have done in France.”
It is thought to be the first time poachers have targeted a rhino living in a European zoo.
The zoo’s two other white rhinos, 37-year-old Gracie and five-year-old Bruno, “escaped the massacre”, the Thoiry Zoo revealed.
Bruno and Vince arrived at the zoo together in 2015. Vince, who was born in a zoo in the Netherlands, was one of 250 rhinos in European zoos who were part of a breeding programme.
The white rhino is a conservation success, having been brought from the edge of extinction in the late 19th Century to a population of about 20,000 animals.
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However, poaching has increased risen over the past few years, as demand from markets like Vietnam – where rhino horn is thought to have aphrodisiac properties – increases.
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