Thanks to that avarice and idiocy, there are scarcely 30,000 rhinos left in the world, about a quarter of which live in Kruger – a stunningly beautiful park the size of Wales where at least 3,500 of the endangered beasts have been butchered over the past five years.

‘It’s absolutely vital that we hold the line in Kruger,’ according to Charlie Mayhew, chief executive of the British conservation charity Tusk. ‘It’s crucial for the survival of the species.’

Bloody war on poaching

All is not yet lost, as I am discovering during three days of rare access to a side of South Africa’s largest and oldest national park seldom seen by the 1.7 million tourists who visit it each year: to the bloody and brutal war on poaching being waged far from its lodges and campsites.

The previous afternoon our helicopter alighted on a rocky escarpment in the Lebombo Mountains, which mark Kruger’s eastern border with Mozambique. The view westward was sublime. Beneath a vast blue sky the seemingly pristine bushveld unspooled to a horizon as wide and flat as the ocean.