The radio room at the unit's headquarters is mission central in the hunt for poachers. If search teams find anything suspicious, reinforcements are dispatched from here. If a battle breaks out, helicopters are on standby to race to the scene.

A kilo of rhino horn fetches up to $60,000 (53,000 euros) on the black market in Asia. A large horn weighs between 1.5 and 3 kilos. The end dealer will easily make more than $100,000 for such a specimen. The horn is a status symbol in Asia. It's ground up and can be mixed, for instance, with expensive long drinks. It's also said to have miraculous healing powers.

Rhino horn has a reputation as a miracle drug in Asia. It supposedly reduces fever and is believed to help in treating measles, strokes and even cancer. But the horn doesn't consist of some mythical, magical substance. It's made of keratin, the same material found in fingernails.

Keratin has absolutely no medicinal effects.

Rhino skin is several centimeters thick. It takes a strong sharp knife and a confident first cut to do the work.

In the trees around the investigation site, vultures wait patiently for the forensic team to clear out. Then their feast begins.

Most poachers are young men who hope illegal hunting will make them wealthy. Criminal syndicates lure the men again and again with the promise of easy money. But it's the prison cell that awaits many. Between January and August 2016, the South African authorities arrested 414 people for poaching. Some 177 of those were picked up in Kruger National Park. The South African justice system shows no leniency. Poaching is considered a serious crime.

The men's lives will be put on hold for years or even decades. Many turned to poaching out of desperation, and it's precisely such men the syndicates target. They are at once perpetrators and victims.

Rhinos are not the only megafauna facing extinction. Africa's elephants are disappearing too. Demand for ivory is to blame. At the beginning of the 20th century, the continent's elephants numbered significantly more than one million. Today, there are around 352,000 left. In ten more years, numbers are expected to fall to 160,000. And after that?

(Great Elephant Census)

If poaching continues unchecked, all wild rhinos and elephants on the planet will be wiped out by the middle of this century.