Watch: Dogs a game changer in curbing rhino poaching

The South African National Parks (SANParks) K9 antipoaching unit has become a game changer, having a more than 90% success rate in apprehending poachers in Kruger National Park.

Section ranger Kally Ubisi said the anti-poaching programme, which was established seven years, ago attributed some of its success to the dogs and their handlers.

Ubisi said well-trained German shepherds and bloodhounds were used to track poachers in the field and detect explosives, firearms, ammunition and wildlife products going through park gates.

“The dogs use their greater sense of smell and hearing to do things that people can’t do,” Ubisi said.

Since the start of the programme, Ubisi said the initiative had acquired more dogs and had even more successes in apprehending poachers.

“These dogs were bought when we saw a need for them after intensive research and also after talking to other stakeholders that are in the same field of antipoaching as us,” he added.

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During a visit to the K9 facility, a dog handler demonstrated how a dog sniffs out poachers, with some of the journalists hiding to show how quickly the dog would find them.

SANParks spokesperson Isaac Phaahla said although poaching in the national parks remained a major conservation challenge, the dogs were integral to their success in cambating it in the Kruger National Park.

“We also decided that in the intensive protective zones, we need to dehorn most of the rhinos that are in there because that is where the hope of stabilising the animals comes from,” he said.

Meanwhile, the success of the antipoaching programmes continues and the team recently tracked down two poachers in the park who are facing charges of possession of a firearm and ammunition and the intent to commit crime.

According to Phaahla, the ongoing case was also proof of how different antipoaching initiatives have helped immeasurably in the fight to save wildlife. He also said they were conducting a study to find out how some initiatives, such as dehorning, have worked out.

“When we dehorn, we put a chip on the rhino’s body so that if we find the carcass we can tell whether it was dehorned or not.”

Some of the other initiatives to protect rhinos included caring for calves whose mothers had been injured or killed.

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“We take the animals, usually the orphans which are older than a year, the ones that can feed by themselves, and keep them here” said SANParks veterinarian Lufuno Netshitavhadulu.

“The injured animals that are kept here are mostly black rhinos because they adapt easily to the boma situation.”

Netshitavhadulu said the facility also helped in finding foster mothers for the orphaned calves until they were ready to be let out into the wild.

There were some dehorned rhinos with calves less than five years old in the facility. The vet also said that over the past two years the facility had released two rhinos, which had grown up there, back into the wild.

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za