WildLife Group
of the SAVA
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Bush buzz
Rhino Poaching in South Africa: are Numbers Falling or
Focus Shifting?
Sunday 18 September 2016
Keith Somerville, Visiting Professor, University of Kent
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article. (https://theconversation.com/rhino-poaching-in-south-africa-are-numbers-falling-orfocus-shifting-65358)
South Africa recently triumphantly announced that
rhino poaching is on the decline in the Kruger National
Park. South Africa’s Minister of Environmental Affairs,
Edna Molewa, said 702 rhinos had been killed in the
country as a whole so far this year, compared with 796
in the same period last year.
So far this year 414 suspected poachers have been
arrested. Around 177 of these were in Kruger and
237 in the rest of the country. The figures don’t tally,
unless Funda’s estimate includes a significant number
of the poachers caught and released without charge
or perhaps killed in contacts with the rangers.
She also announced that between January and August
this year a total of 458 poached rhino carcasses were
found in Kruger compared to 557 in the same period
last year. This represents a 17.8% decline. The park is
the hardest hit by poaching and the numbers look like
good news for rhinos and conservation. But is there
really a downward trend? Or is it just a re-orientation
by poachers in the face of stepped-up security in the
Kruger Park and the reflection of the steady decline in
South African rhino numbers due to poaching?
The number of incursions suggest there has been
no let up in poaching. It may be that poachers are
finding rhino harder to find. Kruger’s chief ranger
said that the park had deployed very high security
in an intensive protection zone. This zone, in the
southern third of the park and along the border
with Mozambique, is a regular route for poachers
entering the park. He added that poachers were
now often entering the park posing as tourists rather
than sneaking across the unfenced border with
Mozambique. Poachers were also increasingly armed
with high-powered Czech hunting rifles with sound
moderators. These, he believed, had been brought
into South Africa from Mozambique, where they had
been supplied to wildlife officials but then illegally
sold on to poachers.
Poaches adopt new strategies
Chief Ranger Funda, who heads the protection teams
at the Kruger National Park, told me that despite the
falling carcass numbers, the number of incursions by
poachers had increased by a worrying 27.87%. That is
a staggering 2,115 for the first eight months of 2016.
He told me that about half the poachers who entered
the park were caught by rangers.
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This single piece of rhino horn, from a non-lethally
dehorned rhino, is worth about $40,000. Keith Somerville