SA turns to lie-detectors in anti-poaching war

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South Africa plans to carry out lie detector tests on staff working at its game reserves in a bid to fight rampant wildlife poaching, a national parks management agency said Thursday.

Poachers, sometimes operating in cahoots with crooked park employees, have decimated the country’s population of endangered rhinos in recent years. 

To tackle the problem, South African National Parks authority, SANParks, has adopted a new polygraph testing policy for its employees, it said Thursday.

Testing will be on a voluntary basis in the interim, but the “intention is ultimately to make polygraph testing compulsory to certain job categories,” SANParks said in a statement.

ALSO READ: Kruger National Park: 82 rhinos killed in first half of 2022

The policy approved in November is expected to come into force early next year, Environment affairs minister Barbara Creecy said in a written answer to the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party, which published the response on Wednesday.

“There are suspicions that some SANParks officials may have been corrupted,” Dave Bryant, the DA’s shadow environment minister told AFP.

“It is high time that we take active measures and active steps towards addressing this”.

South Africa is home to nearly 80 percent of the world’s rhinoceroses.

But it is also a hotspot for rhino poaching, driven by demand from Asia, where horns are used in traditional medicine for their supposed therapeutic effect.

Almost 470 rhinos were poached across the country between April 2021 and March 2022, according to government figures — up 16 percent on the previous twelve months. 

ALSO READ: Three poachers caught after they killed four Kruger rhinos

The world-famous Kruger National Park, a tourist magnet bordering Mozambique, has seen its rhino population decrease dramatically over the past decade-and-a-half due to poaching. 

The park’s estimated tally in 2021 was 2,800 rhinos, around 70 percent down compared to 10,000 in 2008, according to official SANParks statistics.

Details of the new lie-detector policy are still being finalised.

SANParks communications chief Rey Thakhuli, said that “polygraph testing is not the answer to prevent or manage staff involvement in criminality but it is a tool that needs to be used as part of the toolkit and with a full understanding of its benefits, but also its limitations”.

Polygraph tests for SANParks staff were first introduced in 2016 as part of a pilot project.  

ALSO READ: Poaching, horn trade declines but rhinos still in danger

Last year the environment ministry said 71 park officials had taken the test. 

SANParks employs about 4,000 people, according to official figures.