SKUKUZA – One rhino is now being slaughtered every 11 hours in our country. This was according to water and environmental affairs minister Ms Edna Molewa who spoke at the portfolio committee on the department’s stakeholders’ workshop on rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park (KNP) on Monday.
The total number of rhino poached this year is 919. “The park continues to bear the brunt of this scourge, having lost more than 560 to unscrupulous poachers during the past 11 months,” said Molewa.
The five-day workshop is an indication of the importance attached to rhino poaching at the highest levels of government. In facing the crime which exploits our country’s wildlife assets, government has established relationships with several international authorities.
A relationship of mutual legal assistance was developed with the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in February 2009. As a result Hong Kong officials successfully seized 33 rhino horns and elephant ivory products in November. Lowvelder reported last week that these horns were finally returned to South Africa and are estimated to be worth R24 million.
“There is an international youth summit on rhino planned for 2014, in which youth from South Africa and Vietnam will exchange ideas and develop initiatives. Another initiative is the relocation of those living within the Transfrontier Park to villages, and the erection of the outer boundary fence to enclose the KNP on the Mozambican side,” she continued.
South Africa conserves 83 per cent of the continent’s rhino and 73 per cent of wild rhino in the world. The continuing year-on-year increase in poaching represents an unprecedented conservation crisis for the country. It also underscores a new, worrying dimension. Typically, they are killed by being shot with AK47 assault rifles. Recently, however, a growing number have been killed by a single shot from a high-calibre weapon, characteristically only used by wildlife-industry professionals. The use of such equipment, and other evidence which has suggested the presence of helicopters at crime scenes, represents a completely “new face”. This loosely links various combinations of rogue wildlife-industry players, compromised or corrupted government rangers or officials and Asian criminal operators.
Rhino crime syndicates are typically multinational operations which engage in other activities such as drug and diamond smuggling, human trafficking and other wildlife products like elephant ivory and abalone. Of the 43 documented arrests of Asian nationals for rhino crimes in South Africa, 24 were Vietnamese (56 per cent) and 13 were Chinese (28 per cent), with the remainder from Thailand and Malaysia. Furthermore, at least three officials based at Vietnam’s Embassy in Pretoria have been documented participants in rhino-horn trafficking.
The illicit trade extends from the poacher on site in Africa to a series of middlemen buyers, exporters and couriers at local and international levels, to an end-use consumer in a distant country, which today is usually Vietnam. The South African National Wildlife Crime Reaction Unit has identified five distinct levels at which rhino-horn trade syndicates operate within and outside of Africa.
The first three levels function nationally and represent the illegal killing of these animals. Level one consists of local buyers and couriers who receive the horns from poachers, who are the level two operators. The national couriers, buyers and exporters who consolidate horns from all sources: poaching, stockpile sales, theft and illegal dehorning, as well as “pseudo-hunting” activities are considered level three operators. Linking Africa to international markets is level four, which includes the buyers, exporters, importers and couriers. They are then responsible for the movement of horn into level five constituting the dealers and consumers in the end-use markets.
