Poaching has gone out-of-control in Africa:  Brazen poachers somehow managed to shoot and kill a pregnant White Rhinoceros, hack the horn out of her hard, and escape from one of the continent’s best-guarded nature preserves.

The poachers killed the rhino late Friday in Nairobi National Park, the very headquarters of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), and adjacent to a city of three million people.  The KWS boasts the park is “a unique ecosystem by being the only protected area in the world close to a capital city”.

Park visitors found the carcass.  Chris Donahue and his family spotted three lions near the felled rhino, now de-horned, and realized what had happened.

“The kids were like, ‘Daddy, was that rhino sick?’ And we were like, no, we're pretty sure it was poached,” said Donohue, an American who lives in Nairobi and who takes his kids to Nairobi National Park several times a year.  “For me it was pretty traumatic to see it.”

Rhinos are considered extinct in Cameroon and Ghana.  In Kenya, 35 rhinos have been killed this year, compared to 29 in all of last year.  The horns are usually smuggled to Asia for use in “traditional medicine”.