By Rohit Kachroo, Correspondent, NBC News

First came the sound of gunshots late at night.

Then, a few hours later, a carcass was found -- his bloodied face and mutilated body shielded by the long grass. 

Before long, the stench of death was rising from what was now a crime scene.

The rangers at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy seemed almost unmoved. But they have seen it, heard it and smelled it too many times before.

Once again, this 60,000-acre park -- home to one in eight of Kenya’s rhinos -- has been struck by an armed gang.

Despite the helicopters, the dog handlers, the electric fencing and the hiring of a former British Army captain as chief executive, Lewa has struggled with the poachers, losing six rhinos over a four-week period earlier this year.

It is a problem for parks across Africa, where some populations of rhino and elephant face extinction within decades. Gruesome killings, like the slaughter of a family of 12 elephants in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park last January, have caused shock but brought no solutions.

At least Lewa has a powerful supporter. This is where Prince William spent much of his gap year.  It is where he proposed to Kate Middleton in 2010. And it is here that he found another love: the precious species that are under threat from the trade in ivory and rhino horn.

On Tuesday, William will challenge African "producer" countries and Asian "consumer" countries to end the slaughter. But what is the chance of a real solution?

The words of a prince will mean little to the paupers who stalk the parks of Africa in search of a rhino horn which may be worth 30,000 pounds – more than its weight in gold. 

Perhaps stiffer sentences in African countries will make a difference -- but campaigners say that some are resisting pressure to punish those involved in the trade.

Then there's the question of how the meeting dignitaries can succeed in choking demand in the Far East, where others have failed before -- and where horns and tusks are said to have medicinal value.

Campaigners welcome the fact that the issue is being talked about at all -- and they accept that solutions will take time.

But for the majestic creatures that roam Lewa, there may be little of that.  

Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters

The "Seeker" is presented to reporters on Tuesday at Kruger National Park.

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa -- The war against rhino poaching has taken to the skies, with South Africa deploying a high-tech, low-speed reconnaissance aircraft to detect illegal hunters before they strike.

"This is a war. You cannot take a stick to a gunfight," said Ivor Ichikowitz, chairman of Africa's largest privately held defense firm, Paramount, which manufactured the plane donated to the South Africa National Park Service.

Home to nearly all the continent's rhinos, South Africa is on the frontline of a poaching war where criminals with high-powered weapons, night vision goggles and even helicopters have been killing the animals for their horns, which sell at prices higher than gold in Asia as a traditional medicine.

The anti-poaching aircraft, named Seeker, is equipped with sophisticated heat sensors to detect animals and humans on the ground, and a quiet engine.

This will aid pilots and spotters as they fly at high altitudes over South Africa's flagship Kruger National Park, which borders with Mozambique. Most of the illicit rhino killings take place in this park.

Through the start of December, 558 rhinos had been killed this year by poachers, with 364 of the deaths in Kruger - a park roughly the same size as Israel. The death toll has already hit a new annual record, surpassing the 448 killed in all of 2011.

South Africa has deployed its military to protect rhinos but that has not been enough to curb international crime syndicates.

The number of rhinos being killed in South Africa has now reached a level likely to lead to population decline, according to expert studies.

Poaching has increased dramatically since about 2007 as a growing affluent class in China, Vietnam and Thailand began spending more on rhino horn as a traditional medicine.

It is used to purportedly treat a variety of ailments, including "devil possession", but is now also seen as a cancer cure -- a claim not backed by science.

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Poachers have killed 455 rhinos so far this year in South Africa -- more than half in a single national park -- topping last year’s mark of 448, South Africa announced this week. The rhinos are killed for their horns, which fetch thousands of dollars and are ground up as a purported treatment for illnesses and hangovers.

Kruger National Park, the crown jewel of the country's park system, saw 272 killings, South African National Parks said in a report Tuesday.

The World Wildlife Fund urged South Africa to provide more on-the-ground protection and to press Vietnam, which has become the main destination for rhino horns.

"WWF is concerned that the memorandum of understanding with Vietnam for collaborative action against illegal rhino horn trade remains unsigned," Jo Shaw, the group's rhino coordinator in South Africa, said in a statement. "There is also an urgent need for law enforcement actions by neighboring countries which are implicated as transit routes for illegal trade in rhino horn, specifically Mozambique."

The group did praise South Africa for a spike in poaching arrests, but added that a key test will be what happens in a trial that begins Friday.

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Dubbed the "Groenewald Gang," a safari tour operator, veterinarians, professional hunters and a helicopter pilot face charges related to the killing of 20 rhinos. 

"The world is watching to see that South Africa is prepared to prosecute rhino crimes to the fullest extent of the law and take these crimes seriously as an affront to South Africa’s national heritage," Shaw said.

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Poaching of rhino horns and elephant tusks has increased across Africa and Asia as demand has risen in recent years.

In South Africa, just 13 rhinos were slaughtered in 2007, followed by 83 in 2008. The number has steadily increased since then.

Shaw noted that while "more rhinos are being born than are dying" in South Africa, that could change. "We are approaching the critical tipping point where rhino numbers go into decline and would undermine conservation efforts."

Related: Rhino slaughter tied to Vietnam

Africa is home to two rhino species: the black and the white rhino. 

White rhinos had declined to fewer than 12,000 in 2001, but conservation efforts have increased that to 20,000, WWF noted.

The black rhino population dropped to around 2,000 in the 1990s, but has recovered to around 4,800. As recently as the 1960s, 65,000 black rhinos roamed Africa, WWF said. 

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Had it not been for the slaughter of seven rhinos in India's Assam state last week, a rhino swept out of a wildlife reserve by floodwaters might now be the eighth. Instead, dozens of elite park rangers on Tuesday surrounded a river area where the one-horned rhino was hiding, as experts weighed whether to try airlifting the massive animal to a safer area.

The killings made headlines in Assam since some took place inside Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At least two of the rhinos were alive when their horns were hacked off, The Times of India reported.

Each horn can fetch thousands of dollars. The horns are used in parts of Asia, either carved into bowls or cups as a status of wealth, or ground up as a powder used to treat hangovers or even as a purported cancer cure.

Assam's rhino population has improved in recent years, and the species is no longer listed as endangered in Assam. Nearly 2,300 are inside the national park, the last stronghold for rhinos in India.

AP

A dead rhino is removed from inside India's Kaziranga National Park last Friday. It was shot dead and its horn removed.

But officials are worried that rising prices for horns will counter that effort.

Eleven rhinos have been killed by poachers so far this year in Assam, while recent flooding has killed 28 rhinos.

PhotoBlog: Searching high and low for rhino 
PhotoBlog: Rhino gets upside down helicopter ride

Three suspected poachers have been killed and 14 arrested so far this year, the government says.

Biju Boro / AFP - Getty Images

An Indian forest official on Thursday shows the shells from bullets used by poachers to shoot a one-horned horn rhino just outside Kaziranga National Park. The dead rhino is seen in the background with its horn cut off.

Local conservation groups on Monday staged a protest in Guwahati, a city near the national park, issuing a statement that park officials had not "learned lessons" from several rhino killings in June. "The Forest Department has miserably failed to elicit support" from local residents "towards conservation efforts," they said in a statement, according to the Assam Tribune.

A spike in rhino killings has also been reported in South Africa this year. And Vietnam lost its last Javan rhino last year to poachers.

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Religious leaders are the latest recruits in the war by conservationists against those slaughtering thousands of elephants and rhinos across Africa each year. The World Wildlife Fund on Friday announced a partnership with various religious groups — some of which are themselves fueling the crisis by allowing religious artifacts to be made from ivory.

"Halting wildlife trade is a moral issue," Dekila Chungyalpa, WWF’s Sacred Earth program director, said in a statement announcing the partnership with the Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

The partnership was sealed Thursday night inside Kenya's Nairobi National Park, where three dozen religious leaders from nine African countries gathered amid rhinos, zebras, buffalo and ostriches all within site of the skyline of Kenya's capital.

 Standing before a pile of charred elephant ivory as dusk covered the surrounding savannah, Christian, Muslim and Hindu religious leaders grasped hands and prayed. The remains were from a 1989 burn of confiscated ivory that Kenya set on fire to draw attention to the slaughter.  

"We are the ones who are driving God's creatures to extinction," said Martin Palmer, secretary-general of the Britain-based alliance. "We are the ones who can change the way Africa works."

Poachers are escalating their assault on Africa's elephants and rhinos, and conservationists warn that the animals cannot survive Asia's high-dollar demand for ivory tusks and rhino horn powder. Some wildlife agents, customs officials and government leaders are being paid off by what is viewed as a well-organized mafia moving animal parts from Africa to Asia, charge the conservationists. 

Ben Curtis / AP

Religious leaders of different faiths pray around a pile of charred elephant ivory at Kenya's Nairobi National Park on Thursday.

Moreover, poachers can earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a rhino horn or elephant tusk. That money represents far more than they could earn after years of labor in the typical village job. 

"Faith leaders are the heart and backbone of local communities," Chungyalpa noted. "They guide and direct the way we think, behave and live our lives," she said, adding later: "I think this is the missing piece in conservation strategies... WWF can yell us much as we want and no one will listen to us, but a religious leader can say 'This is not a part of our values. This is immoral.'"

Ben Curtis / AP

Elephants gather at dusk on March 25 to drink at a watering hole in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park.

It's not known what kind of impact religious leaders may be able to make, but Mike Watson, the chief executive of Kenya's Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, said he and other conservationists will take any help they can get.

National Geographic

Lewa saw one of its rhinos killed by poachers last week. The park had never suffered a rhino poaching death before 2009; it's had five of its rhinos killed since then. 

"We know for a fact that one of the demands for ivory is religious icons in the Far East, and if pressure can be brought to bear to reduce that demand both locally here in Kenya through assistance by religious leaders, and overseas, it can only be a good step," he said. "It might take generations. If religious leaders can some way speed that process up, all well and good, but all efforts need to be on the table." 

The significance of religious icons was underscored by National Geographic magazine, which in its October issue traced how Catholics in the Philippines and Buddhists in Thailand make up part of the demand for ivory.

Chungyalpa said WWF is working with Buddhists to try to educate Asian consumers about ivory and rhino horn powder. Yao Ming, the oversized basketball star from China, visited Kenya last month to raise awareness and make a film called "The End of the Wild," she noted.

Brent Stirton / National Geographic

A master ivory carver works on the head of a Madonna in his studio outside Manila, Philippines. He prefers carving wood but says that ivory has a special quality he finds irresistible — "much high prices."

The poaching numbers are grim. The number of rhinos killed by poachers in South Africa has risen from 13 in 2007 to 448 last year, WWF says. Last year saw more large-scale ivory seizures than any year in the last two decades, it added. Tens of thousands of elephants are being killed by poachers each year.

Chungyalpa compared the effort to enlist religious leaders in the anti-poaching fight to how religious pressure helped end the era of apartheid in South Africa.

"There has to be a rising up of moral outrage," she said. "This is the spirit we're after." 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Mike Hutchings / Reuters

These elephants have some protection inside South Africa's Pilanesberg National Park but most across the continent are easy targets for poachers.

Providing the grimmest count yet on Africa's wildlife crisis, the global body tracking endangered species reported Thursday that tens of thousands of elephants likely were slaughtered last year by poachers after their tusks. Rhinos, while fewer in number, also saw mass slaughter as poachers went after their horns. 

Prices for both have skyrocketed due to demand in Asia, where tusks are used for ivory ornaments and horns as a traditional medicine.

The illegal trade is escalating and "pushing these species toward extinction," John Scanlon, secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, said in testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In the case of rhinos, just 25,000 of which are estimated left in the wild, extinction could come "during the lifetime of our children," he added.

In South Africa alone, he noted, 448 rhinos were killed last year -- up from 13 in 2007.

The Senate hearing on the rapid rise in smuggling came as Kenya said that 359 elephant tusks smuggled in shipping containers and confiscated by Sri Lanka had come from its ports.

Scanlon said a report coming out later this year on Africa's elephants will show that "the levels of illegal killing exceed what can be sustained in all four African sub-regions in 2011, with elephant populations now in net decline."

359 elephant tusks smuggled in ship containers
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Bloodhounds used to track poachers
PhotoBlog: Tagging elephants to save them 

"We have slid into an acute crisis with the African elephant that does not appear to be on many people’s radar in the U.S.," added Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants. "What’s happening to the elephants is outrageous, and the more so since we have been through these ivory crises before and should have found solutions by now."

Even before the most recent escalation, Africa's elephant population had shrunk from an estimated 1.3 million in 1979 to 450,000 in 2007, Douglas-Hamilton noted.

He urged the United States to press other nations, particularly China and Thailand, to crack down on the trade, and to provide more funds for conservation. "If China would declare a unilateral 10-year moratorium on ivory imports, there would be a future for elephants in Africa," he said.

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AFP - Getty Images

Some of the seized elephant tusks are displayed Wednesday at a customs warehouse in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Three shipping containers found in Sri Lanka stuffed with 359 elephant tusks came from Kenya, the Kenya Wildlife Service reported Thursday.

Trading in tusks is illegal, and Sri Lanka seized the cargo on Tuesday after it was detected by scans.

The containers -- which had been declared as only containing plastic waste and teak logs -- were destined for Dubai, India and Guatemala.

A fourth container was detained before it left the country, Kenya's wildlife service said in a statement.

Poaching for elephant ivory and rhino horns has risen dramatically across Africa due to demand from Asia, where ivory is used for ornaments and horns used in traditional medicine.

The news came as the U.S. Senate held a hearing on the problem.

Last year was "the worst" in 23 years of collecting data on ivory seizures, the wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC said in its report for 2011, with most large seizures coming from ports in Kenya or Tanzania.

The rise, said TRAFFIC's Tom Milliken, reflects "both a rising demand in Asia and the increasing sophistication of the criminal gangs behind the trafficking. Most illegal shipments of African elephant ivory end up in either China or Thailand."

Once in Asia, the documentation for illegal shipments is often changed to make it look like a local re-export, helping to hide its true origin, TRAFFIC stated.

"That’s an indication of the level of sophistication enforcement officers are up against in trying to outwit the criminal masterminds behind this insidious trade," said Milliken. "As most large-scale ivory seizures fail to result in any arrests, I fear the criminals are winning."

NBC's Rock Center: Poachers attack rhinos
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On Wednesday, two suspected poachers were shot dead and 32 were arrested, the Kenya Wildlife Service reported, adding that the suspects had shot and wounded an elephant.

The service also listed four other suspected poaching incidents in the last two weeks.

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More than one rhino is being killed in South Africa by poachers each day -- with 2012 on target to be the worst year on record.

Some 159 rhinos have fallen victim to poachers since January, a death toll that looks set to surpass last year's grim figure of 449.  In 2007, only 13 were killed in the country.

Demand comes from parts of China and Vietnam, where new wealth has combined with an age-old myth that rhino horns can be used to cure cancer. 

Rhino horns are now worth an estimated $25,000 per pound, making their natural weapon worth more than gold.

Report: Poachers slaughter half of elephants in African park

Three rhinos were wounded in a single incident last month. Two died, but one -- named Thandi -- survived, though she remains seriously ill.

'Some glimmer of hope'
With little positive news from the frontline of the war with poachers, "Save Thandi" has become a rallying cry amongst those who care about the plight of the rhino in South Africa.

Bringing up baby ... elephants

"People are desperate to see something going right, some positive news, some glimmer of hope that we can actually do something that saves one," wildlife veternarian Dr William Fowlds said. "I think what has come through so strongly over the past month is how important every single animal is to us."

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