| For our final day of Heistmania, here's a story of a very bloody theft: a rhino horn. Writer Jonathan Franklin and photographer Gulshan Khan take us deep into the perverse incentives of the illegal and frankly awful rhino trade, where poachers frequently kill people as well as animals in pursuit of the endangered horns. See the full story here and read the full archive of Heist Issues. If this has been forwarded to you, click here to sign up for more. Twisting above the South African grasslands, the pilot maneuvers his four-seat helicopter lower and lower, the rotors whipping up a cloud of red dirt and spiny branches. A rifleman in the passenger seat leans out and scans intently for his targets. How did that 9-foot-long southern white rhinoceros and her calf just disappear? Are they lying down, hiding in the vegetation? Out here in the 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of Greater Kruger Park, it's easy to lose a rhino.  Joel Alves uses a chainsaw to saw off the horn of a rhino during a dehorning operation in late April in South Africa. Photographer: Gulshan Khan for Bloomberg Businessweek Following directions from the chopper, two packed Land Rovers plow over bushes and bounce along the rough terrain, a man in one vehicle holding tight to an orange Stihl chainsaw. Hacking the horns off a rhino is always a team effort, and with the black market price for a horn topping $40,000, there's no shortage of people willing to traffic one of the animal kingdom's most valuable commodities.  Gerry McDonald flies to the location of the rhino in his helicopter so that the vet in charge can dart the animal. The dehorning teams moves in once the rhino has been darted and sedated. Photographer: Gulshan Khan for Bloomberg Businessweek The dust briefly clears, and the pilot spots his chance. He hovers above the terrified animals, providing the shooter a clean look. The first shot hits the mother in the flank; she panics and pounds forward. A second shot hits the calf, which immediately starts to wobble. Less than five minutes later, both rhinos are toppled in the grass. The Rovers brake, and a dozen people hop out. Rhino poachers often use a panga, a sort of machete, to crudely hack off the horn—after, if the animal is still alive, immobilizing it via a number of deep, brutal slashes severing the spinal cord. This time, a chainsaw roars to life and seconds later, chips of rhino horn (worth $50 a gram as a powder to be swallowed as a supposed cancer cure in Vietnam) shower into the grass. A series of slow, deliberate slices sever both horns from the mother and one from the calf. In total, the horns weigh about 8 pounds—at $11,000 per pound in the collector's market in China, this small bag of loot is worth about $90,000. That in part explains why an estimated three-quarters of the wild rhinos in South Africa have been killed in less than a decade. And why poachers might risk a 25-year jail sentence for a night spent evading lions and leopards and then hacking off horns.  Craig Spencer, a warden inside the Olifants West Nature Reserve, uses sensors to track rhinos. Photographer: Gulshan Khan for Bloomberg Businessweek As he sets down the chainsaw, the cutter looks exhausted, but he isn't done yet. Leaning into the side of the mother rhino, he braces his leg and tries to move her into a more comfortable position. These men and women aren't poachers. The animals were darted with an opiate. Once they were down, a veterinarian poured artificial tears into their eyes, then blindfolded them, trying to minimize their distress as their horns were taken. This elaborate process, called dehorning, is how rhinos, under attack by poaching gangs in South Africa and anywhere else they roam, are protected. Their most valuable part is sawed off and immediately measured, tagged, microchipped and locked away under armed guard.  Qolile Mathebula and Cute Mhlongo on the morning patrol. They are part of an all-female rhino protection team called the Black Mambas. Photographer: Gulshan Khan for Bloomberg Businessweek Like human fingernails, rhino horns carry no nerves, are made of keratin and grow constantly. Once trimmed, the horn grows from flattened nub to a foot in length in five years. The visual effect of a dehorned rhino, meanwhile, is disturbing; it's like looking at a lion after someone has razored off his flowing mane. "I must have participated in 2,000 dehornings. We've done up to 22 in a single day," says Gerry McDonald, the helicopter pilot on this mission. "We shouldn't be doing this, but it's the only thing that's working. At the reserves where we have dehorned, the rhinos have been left alone. We know it's a temporary solution—it's just buying us time. But if you have rhino with horn, you are going to be poached. That's just the way it is."  Right after this picture, the horn was taken for processing, which includes being weighed and embedded with a microchip. Photographer: Gulshan Khan for Bloomberg Businessweek Across South Africa, teams such as this, combining the skills of experienced bush pilots and frontline veterinarians, are fighting to slow the killings of rhinos and the theft of their horns. In this latest twist in the illegal rhino horn trade, the people lopping off the horns with chainsaws are the good guys. Keep reading here. —Jonathan Franklin | 
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