The poaching of Africa's Rhinoceros population didn't just continue last year, it got worse.  At least 1,338 of the animals were killed for their horns in Africa in 2015 - the greatest loss in a single year in the current wave of poaching.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says it also marks the sixth consecutive year that poaching deaths have increased.  Since 2008, around 5,940 Rhinos have been killed - although scientists and environmentalists fear that could be an underestimate.  The IUCN blames increasing demand for Rhino Horn from Southeast Asia, where quack folk medicine holds the rare item is a miracle cure for a host of ailments.

This comes despite international efforts to stop poaching of Rhinos and Elephants using increased patrols at nature preserves that harness satellite technology and more sophisticated intelligence-gathering.  The problem, as always, is manpower - there just aren't enough game wardens and troops dedicated to the cause. 

For instance, Rhino poaching in South Africa has actually gone down, from 1,215 animals killed in 2014 to 1,175 killed last year.  But across the borders, Rhino poaching quadrupled in Namibia and losses in Zimbabwe doubled over the same period.

"If you clamp down on poaching on the one side of the Kruger National Park beside the Mozambique border, then suddenly the balloon pops out a bit the other side and you can get more poaching," said the IUCN's Dr. Richard Emslie.  "There's a trend of poaching from different park to different park and also from one country to another so no individual country is safe and all need to be on their guard given the huge threat," he added.

And no matter how many drones, cameras, or radios authorities use to track poachers, the criminals are able to rise to the challenge:

"What's frightening is that the same technology that we are able to use, they are also able to use. Shockingly, as much as we're using them to combat the poachers, they're using them to facilitate their poaching," said Craig Bruce, a rhino specialist at the Zoological Society of London.  "They understand intelligence as well as we do. They understand how to threaten people to get information, how to threaten people to keep them quiet so the whole criminal element has just advanced in a way that's unprecedented," he added.