Abseiling dogs join fight against rhino poachers - in pictures

Attack dogs and their handlers apprehend a ‘rhino poacher’ after abseiling down from a helicopter into water in a simulation exercise.

The Malinois, or Belgian Shepherd, ‘can work in extreme conditions’, says Henry Holsthyzen, who runs Paramount’s K9 Solutions dog academy.

South Africa is trying to end the poaching by setting up a protection zone within the Kruger National Park, moving rhinos to private ranches and deploying soldiers to fight poachers.

Johannesburg-based Paramount last year contributed a helicopter to help catch poachers in Kruger.

At the K9 academy, about 60 adult dogs and 60 puppies are preparing for deployment in South Africa’s war on rhino poaching.

A Malinois can sell for as much as $9,122. From the age of about six weeks, the dogs start being trained in the art of hunting, tracking and detecting. The breed has about 60 times as many sensory receptors in its nose than humans.

With a few sharp commands in Afrikaans from Marius, it takes Venom seconds to sniff out a small capsule of rhino horn shavings tucked into the wheel arch of a black Toyota Prado SUV. Marius rewards him by throwing a tennis ball which the dog chases down. Next, he sniffs out a rifle from another SUV.

In another training exercise, Marius and Venom leap out of a helicopter into a muddy lake to apprehend a fleeing suspect.

National parks from South Africa and other countries send their rangers to be trained alongside the dogs, before they return to their reserves as a unit. It costs the Ichikowitz foundation about 130,000 rand (Dh43,000) to groom one dog for action and then roughly 50,000 rand each year in upkeep.

An army of dogs are being trained as South African defence company Paramount Group’s contribution to fighting the poachers in South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos. All photos by Denis Farrell / AP Photo