Taking fight to poachers

There’s a place when coming off the Lebombo mountain range between Mozambique and South Africa where it seems as if the entire Kruger National Park can be seen.

Of course, at nearly two million hectares that’s impossible, but the view of massive expanses of bush does give an idea of the enormity of the problem faced by rangers combating poachers.

On Monday, traditional leaders from the Kruger’s western boundary were shown the effects of rhino poaching when they visited a crime scene, one of three rhinos killed within minutes of each other on Sunday.

On the eastern boundary, where Parque Nacional do Limpopo (PNL) borders on Kruger, the incursions have slowed down to the point where most now come from South Africa.

It’s in part due to the efforts of Mozambique’s government in removing people who traditionally lived in the park, and where the Greater Limpopo Conservancy is starting to show its worth.

The GLC is an area of 2 483 km2, and “is currently the most critical piece of land on the planet for rhino conservation”, according to the International Poaching Foundation.

A demonstration of how members of the Dyke Advisory Group (DAG) anti-poaching team – advisors to the GLC – worked with Kruger rangers when it came to tracking suspects showed, in theory anyway, how the handover of information worked when political red tape interfered.

DAG – under former Rhodesian and Zimbabwean Army Colonel Lionel Dyck – has an advantage in that the PNL fence is electrified and monitored, making it possible to start tracking suspects immediately.

Its members can only track as far as the miserable bundle of wire and rusty staves purporting to be a fence between the two countries is reached before they had to hand over pursuit to South Africa.

There’s been little movement on Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula’s August declaration the fence would be repaired.

And while it won’t stop poachers, a hi-tech fence would go a long way towards supplying important data of when and where poachers are attacking South African rhinos.

The number of arrests inside the Kruger National Park totalled 90 alleged poachers with 112 arrested adjacent to the Kruger.

According to Environmental Minister Edna Molewa in August, a total of 243 rhino carcasses were found between January and the end of June 2017.

Running the numbers now between January and the end of November, means an estimated 445 rhinos have been slaughtered for their horn, something only of use to rhinos.

This ties in with South African National Parks spokesperson Ike Phaahla’s estimate of “around 500”, a number which is unlikely to be confirmed by the department of environmental affairs until the next briefing.

It does represent a drop in poaching stats, although Molewa reported some 3 700 incursions into Kruger in the first seven months of this year as poachers hunt SA’s most protected animal.

– amandaw@citizen.co.za

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