Rhino Poaching 2017-2025

[RogerFraser]

It is much better than last year

Its worse already more than last year but is better than 2019 but I still feel this is more to do with lower population than actual intervention .

[Richprins]

[Lisbeth]

I've got it all wrong, I thought that it was about tourism I must have been very tired when I read it and very "absent"

[Lisbeth]

Rhino poaching rebounds from Covid-19 containment — private reserves fight a surge

By Ed Stoddard• 1 August 2021


Wasinda, a three-year-old white rhino at a private game farm in the Free State, with a hide covering open wounds before undergoing treatment by vets. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Kim Ludbrook)

The number of rhinos killed to feed the horn trade in South Africa rose in the first six months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020, the latest data shows. It also highlights the increased targeting of rhinos on private reserves where more than half of the national herd resides.

The Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) released the data on Saturday, 31 July — World Ranger Day — a day dedicated to the brave men and women who protect wildlife in the field. The cause is noble, but many battles are sadly lost.

The data showed that in the first six months of this year, 249 rhinos were killed for their horns compared to 166 in the same period last year, when the initial hard lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic clearly curtailed the killing. That’s a 50% increase, which suggests that precious metals and minerals are not the only “commodity exports” on the rise. Rhino poaching has not yet reached pre-Covid levels as 318 of the animals were slain for their horns between January and June 2019. But that may be only a matter of time.

The data also shows that privately owned rhinos have been increasingly targeted this year.

“Noticeable increased poacher pressure has been experienced in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Free State provinces. The department is also monitoring the increased pressure seen on private rhino reserves and collaborating closely with the private sector which continues to play a significant role in rhino protection. During the same reporting period over the last three years, losses in private parks constituted 15% of the total reported loss in 2019, 9% in 2020 and 30% so far in 2021,” DEFF said in a statement.

According to the estimates of the Private Rhino Owners Association (PROA), at least 55% of South Africa’s national rhino herd of around 14,000 to 15,000 is in private hands. The data highlights that private owners have been doing a better job of protecting their animals than the government in state parks such as the Kruger. If you own 55% of the animals and 30% of the toll is from your herd, you are clearly losing fewer of the critters to poachers.

But it also means things have got a lot worse over the past two years on private reserves and ranches. In 2019, 15% of 318 would be 48 animals. Out of the 249 animals killed until the end of June this year, 30% would be 75 rhinos.

Pelham Jones, the chairman of PROA, told Our Burning Planet that private sector operators have seen revenue that could have been spent on security drop because of the pandemic’s impact on foreign tourism. Many generate their income from game viewing or hunting and rely on foreign tourists with deep pockets of hard currency. Another source of income, animal auctions, has also been impacted.

“This shows that the poaching syndicates are turning their attention to private reserves. We find this latest trend incredibly alarming and we are in a greater level of stress than ever before because our members don’t have money to spend on additional security. The dual impact of Covid-19 and the lack of foreign tourists has hit us hard,” Jones said.

A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Letters last year found that 28% of South Africa’s private rhino owners are disinvesting from the species. This was partly in response to surging security costs, and one of the trends is that fewer people own increasing numbers of rhinos. This trend could now be accelerated.

The latest poaching data also comes against the backdrop of a government policy drive to end the intensive breeding of lions — which is another issue and has wide support, including from the hunting industry — and rhinos, which has been applauded by some conservationists and animal welfare organisations, but has raised hackles among private owners.

“There are no longer any incentives to own rhino,” Jones said. The vexed issue of legalising the rhino horn trade also lurks in the background here. The accelerant for the poaching onslaught is red-hot demand for rhino horn for its alleged (and scientifically bogus) medicinal uses in newly affluent Asian economies such as Vietnam.

Global trade in rhino horn has been banned since the late 1970s under CITES, an international agreement among governments to regulate the trade in wild animal and plant specimens to ensure their survival. The anti-trade camp maintains that legalisation of the rhino horn trade would just add fuel to the flames of the poaching fire. The pro-trade camp holds that it would squelch the fire by feeding the market with a legal product, thereby robbing the flame of its oxygen. South Africa has made it clear that it will not push for legalisation at the next big CITES meeting in Costa Rica in 2022. All sides in this polarising debate have legitimate concerns.

But much of the private rhino sector may feel it is being burnt at the moment, and the fact of the matter is that the sector has done a lot to build up the national herd of rhinos in South Africa, and hence global numbers.

The private sector may be a victim of its own success. Data that emerged earlier this year suggested that the Kruger rhino population may have fallen by as much as 70% over the past decade because of the unrelenting pressure of poaching.

Kruger of course is huge — roughly the size of Israel — and fewer animals mean longer times searching for them over a massive territory. But if more than half of your target species is on far smaller private reserves, you might make a profitable pivot in that direction. Especially if private owners are increasingly short of the cash needed to pay for security measures.

Policy, politics, poaching and privatisation are all playing out here in interesting and concerning ways. DM/OBP

[Lisbeth]

Just a curiosity (if anyone knows): Would it be possible to introduce farmed rhinos into the wild?

[Richprins]

Yes one just releases them, basically. They are like cows.
Only problem could be competition from territorial bulls.

[Lisbeth]

That's what I thought, I only wanted a confirmation, thank you

[Lisbeth]

Saving rhinos is a litmus test for tackling organised crime and corruption in South Africa

By Julian Rademeyer and Dr Jo Shaw• 21 September 2021


The threats rhinos face are ultimately symptoms of far deeper ills afflicting the country and a litmus test of South Africa’s ability to tackle broader organised crime and corruption. (Photo: Julian Rademeyer)

In the 11 years since one of the world’s most-wanted rhino poachers was arrested, thousands of rhinos have been killed, while the issue has faded from the headlines. But there are signs of hope.

Julian Rademeyer is director for east and southern Africa at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and author of Killing for Profit – Exposing the illegal rhino horn trade. Dr Jo Shaw is senior manager of the Wildlife Programme at WWF South Africa and African Rhino Lead for the WWF network.

Eleven years ago today, Dawie Groenewald, a little-known ex-policeman turned hunting safari operator, was arrested on charges of masterminding a lucrative rhino horn trafficking network involving professional hunters, vets and a pilot.

A police spokesperson described the case at the time as “a huge stride in our undying efforts to thwart rhino poaching”. The charges brought against Groenewald involved illegal hunting and the alleged killing of more than 50 of his own rhinos, dealing in rhino horns, money laundering, racketeering and fraud. Groenewald’s arrest was lauded as an example of South African law enforcement agencies collaborating to target wildlife criminals.

Yet, more than a decade on, Groenewald’s notoriety as “the world’s most wanted man when it comes to rhino horn trafficking” and “one of South Africa’s most notorious alleged rhino syndicate bosses with a genius for staying out of jail” has only grown.

That case remains unresolved, lurching year after year from one postponement to another. One of Groenewald’s co-accused is dead, charges against another were dropped and a constitutional challenge has upended parts of the indictment. A conviction looks increasingly tenuous.

In July this year, Groenewald was arrested yet again: this time in a police sting operation while allegedly trying to sell 19 rhino horns. (Last Friday, Groenewald and his friend and co-accused AB Steyn appeared briefly in court in Mbombela and the case was postponed to 10 December.)

The Groenewald cases book-end the first decade of South Africa’s rhino poaching crisis. In 2010, when he was first arrested, rhino poaching was front-page news; 333 rhinos had been killed by poachers, more than double the previous year’s toll. A new wildlife crime desk had just been established at the Hawks to investigate poaching networks and rhino horn trafficking involving Vietnamese nationals.

In the 10 years since, 9,885 rhinos have been killed across Africa and the issue has all but faded from the headlines. South Africa remains home to the vast majority of the world’s rhinos and is at the centre of the storm with hundreds of incursions by poachers into reserves, particularly the Kruger National Park, every year.

Poaching in South Africa peaked in 2014 – the worst year on record – at 1,215 incidents. Last year, 394 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa, the lowest figure since 2010, attributed in large part to Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions. But as restrictions ease, poaching incidents are on the rise and in the first six months of this year, 294 rhinos were poached.

Some countries continue to make inroads against poaching. In Namibia, rhino losses were curtailed from 97 incidents in 2015 to just nine in the first seven months of 2021 as a result of cooperation across government agencies, the private sector, NGOs and civil society to investigate and prosecute wildlife crimes and support for wildlife from local communities.

The last decade has also come at great human cost. Soldiers, police and rangers have lost their lives. A police colonel investigating poaching syndicates was assassinated. Others are struggling with the terrible psychological toll of lives lived on the frontlines of an undeclared conflict. And hundreds of young men, often the primary breadwinners in their communities, have been jailed for poaching or shot by rangers and police in national parks and private reserves.

In South Africa, several strategies have been developed over the past decade in efforts to counter poaching, including a wide-ranging national law enforcement strategy on wildlife trafficking drafted in 2015 after a broad consultation process involving the security cluster, the Hawks, National Prosecuting Authority, SANParks, NGOs, the Department of Environment, the Department of Defence and the State Security Agency, among others. To date, despite being unveiled to some fanfare at the Cites CoP in Johannesburg in 2016, it has yet to be approved by Cabinet.

Earlier this year, a report by a ministerial panel appointed to review the policies, legislation and practices on matters related to management, breeding, hunting, trade and handling of elephants, lions, leopards and rhinos presented an ambitious vision of rewilded natural landscapes that would contribute to a transformed and sustainable wildlife sector. Experienced conservationists have echoed the need to reimagine rhino conservation in South Africa and find practical incentives, with others promoting the use of stewardship and safe strongholds.

However, the struggle to save rhinos will require more than effective site-based conservation.In many ways, efforts to counteract rhino poaching are also a litmus test of South Africa’s ability to tackle broader organised crime and corruption challenges.

Trafficking of rhino horn is inextricably linked in some cases to other criminal economies and networks. Take for example the case of Petros Sidney Mabuza, also known as “Mr Big” or Mshengu, who was gunned down in a suspected hit in Hazyview, Mpumalanga, in June this year. His criminal activities are reputed to have extended to ATM bombings, cash-in-transit heists and even murder. His notorious associate, an ex-policeman like Groenewald, is also due back in court today in Skukuza, facing poaching-related charges that date back a decade.

Thus, stopping rhino poaching is as much about combating organised crime as are efforts to dismantle syndicates driving drug trafficking, arms smuggling, cash-in-transit heists, gold robberies and human trafficking.

Rhinos are viewed across cultures as symbols of strength and power – as evidenced by hundreds of company logos and everyday references to the thickness of their hides. As adults, rhinos have no natural predators, except humans. Yet a two-tonne white rhino bull is as defenceless in the face of a gun as we are.

The threats rhinos face are ultimately symptoms of far deeper ills afflicting South Africa: the shocking socioeconomic disparities that persist 27 years after the country’s first democratic elections; corruption that has become deeply embedded into the very fabric of society; the cancerous spread of organised crime and the steady erosion – particularly in the past decade – of police units, intelligence and security structures, the Revenue Service and the prosecuting authority, among others. This affects us all. The damage done will have far-reaching implications for years to come.

It is a bleak picture and one that can quickly overwhelm and dishearten, but there are persistent glimmers of hope. South Africa has some truly remarkable wildlife champions; dedicated police officers, rangers, investigators, prosecutors, private security companies, conservationists, veterinarians, reserve managers and game farmers, who despite the odds and a lack of resources and political support give their all to achieve extraordinary things in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

In the absence of well-functioning formal structures and strategies to address organised crime in South Africa, they have joined forces in their efforts to disrupt poaching syndicates. At national and local levels, environmental investigators, protected areas and conservationists are collaborating and adapting to create their own information-gathering systems and share tools and knowledge. The re-opened Skukuza Court is proving its local effectiveness, with sentences totalling 105 years handed down for poaching activities earlier this month.

Elsewhere, public-private partnerships have shown promise, building on the strengths of different players to meet skills gaps. The lifeblood of any business or crime syndicate is its cash flow. Increasingly, banks, working with government agencies including asset investigation units, financial intelligence centres, financial task forces and NGOs are turning their attention to investigating illicit financial flows fuelling wildlife crime.

Borders, bureaucracy and a tangle of divergent laws and legal jurisdictions are a boon to transnational criminal networks and a bane to law enforcement agencies trying to stop them.

There are indications of improved collaboration between law enforcement agencies in Africa and their counterparts in China, a primary destination and market for rhino horn. And some Chinese authorities, notably the China Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau, have demonstrated a willingness to act on the information shared by NGOs like the Environmental Investigation Agency. Authorities in South Africa and Vietnam, another key rhino horn consumer and transit country, collaborated earlier this year in investigating a seizure of 139kg of rhino horn and 3.1 tonnes of animal parts suspected to be lion bones. But much more can be done and China and Vietnam have pivotal roles to play.

Protected areas have a complex legacy in South Africa, and some believe the tarnished history between people and parks contributes to the strength of wildlife trafficking syndicates. One way to rebuild faith in law enforcement in rural areas would be to show how law enforcement strategies to combat rhino poaching syndicates can also ensure that communities become safer and more resilient – by breaking up these networks, cracking down on corruption and creating a climate with opportunities for socioeconomic development.

Investing in well-functioning conservation areas can create beacons of best practice for improving anti-corruption efforts, law enforcement and governance, not just for rhinos, but in a way that can benefit people living around parks in shared rural safety plans. This can help create safer communities in remote areas where law enforcement is weak due to resource constraints, the vast distances covered by rural police stations and ever-present corruption.

Dedicated individuals, conservationists, environmental agencies and civil society alone cannot plug the gaps which allow organised crime to flourish. It will require a concerted effort by the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa to undo the immense damage done to law enforcement, security and anti-corruption agencies over the past decade and develop the dynamic skill sets, intelligence capacity and strategies needed to investigate, prosecute and dismantle organised crime networks. In this sense, efforts to save the rhino act as a barometer for the effectiveness of the state to protect its people too. DM

[Lisbeth]

Also the article above is new.

Poachers target private reserves after the number of incidents drops in national parks

By Shaun Smillie• 21 September 2021


In the Kruger Park’s latest annual report it was revealed that there were 3,549 white rhinos in the park – 67% lower than the 10,621 counted in 2011. (Photo: EPA-EFE/Kim Ludbrook)

To the rangers who tracked him, he was known as Big Foot, the rhino poacher whose large barefoot prints were often spotted leading in and out of the Kruger National Park.

Big Foot would leave his flip-flops on the Mozambique side of the Kruger Park boundary, then enter barefoot.

In the park he would rendezvous with two accomplices. When travelling at night they would navigate by the stars.

Big Foot would claim he shot one rhino during his 10 excursions into the park. His kill was from a distance of 30m and he used a .375 high-calibre rifle, muffled by a homemade silencer.

Big Foot’s downfall came when he was ratted on by a rival poaching gang. The footprints left by his unusually big feet gave him away at a roadblock he tried to casually walk through.

Big Foot would tell his story to the rangers before being handed over to the Mozambican authorities, where he then disappeared.

Eight years on, and thousands of others have followed Big Foot into the park on the dangerous, illegal hunt for rhino. Their stories are the same: they are the desperately poor, who feel left behind by the governments they live under and become easy prey to the middlemen who recruit them.

But what has changed as the world marks another Rhino Day is that poachers are shifting their activities. They are moving away from the national reserves and focusing on the private rhino owners.

Since 2016 the number of poaching incidents in South Africa has dropped, says Sade Moneron, a research officer at Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

It is not clear what has caused this, although one explanation is that there are fewer rhinos in Kruger Park. In the national park’s latest annual report it was revealed that there were 3,549 white rhinos and about 268 black rhinos in Kruger.

This was 67% lower than the 10,621 white rhino counted in 2011.

In a report published on Tuesday, the International Rhino Foundation went further and said that the white rhino population stood at 18,000 animals, a 12% decrease for the species in the past decade.

Blame for this decline has been placed on poaching, a drought and changes in the methodology of how aerial game counts are now conducted.

“If you look at poaching, numbers in the parks are right down and rhino populations in Kruger are right down,” says David Newton, Traffic’s director for southern Africa. “So if there are fewer rhinos, there will be fewer poached as they are harder to find.”

With fewer rhino available in Kruger, Pelham Jones, the chairperson of the Private Rhino Owners Association, believes this is one of the reasons why poachers are now targeting private reserves.

“Tragically, we have from the end of 2019 to the end-2020 crept up to 25% of the national loss and with this, bearing in mind we own 55% of the national herd of rhino, it’s showing a trend of poaching pressure coming on to private reserves,” he explains.

The problem, he adds, is that unlike the government owned reserves that can draw on large resources, from rangers to the army and law enforcement, the private owners have to pay for this out of their own pockets.

While Jones says rhino populations on private land are growing at 7.2% per annum, the number of owners of these large herbivores is falling.

“We are seeing quite a big disinvestment in rhino. A few years ago we had over 300 reserves that had rhino on; now we estimate that there are between 150 and 180 reserves with rhino.”

In July, Barbara Creecy, the minister of environment, forestry and fisheries, said that from January to the end of June 2021, 249 rhinos were poached for their horns in South Africa. This was more than last year, which saw 166 killed during the same period.

This was the time when South Africa was under what National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele fondly refers to as the “Crime Holiday,” that was brought on by the strict Covid-19 lockdowns.

Creecy did, however, claim that better crime-fighting methods were resulting in fewer poaching incidents and better arrests.

“It is clear that the multidisciplinary, integrated approach to investigating illegal wildlife trade is bearing fruit and that effective collaboration with critical role-players remains key to our success,” said Creecy in July.

In a statement the Department of the Environment, Forestry and Fisheries said that through the establishment of seven Integrated Wildlife Zones, they planned to strengthen cooperation between the state and private organisations involved in the conservation of rhino.

SANParks, the statement said, is also investing in guarding rhinos.

Future plans include a project supported by the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank and United Nations Environment Programme that aims to bolster combating poaching by, in part, strengthening analyst support, building on a DNA programme and working to improve prosecution and investigation capabilities.

The plan is also to assist communities in poaching areas. Moneron believes that to win the war, more needs to be done to deal with the socioeconomic drivers that are pulling desperate men into poaching.

She recently spent time interviewing jailed poachers, who were in prison for rhino, abalone and cycad poaching offences. Moneron wanted to understand what was drawing them into crime.

The majority of the interviewees were rhino poachers and most of them said they had committed their crimes out of desperation, because there weren’t any economic opportunities.

“I knew it was illegal, but I was encouraged to take the risk in order to make ends meet for my family. I knew that if I succeeded I would have money, but if I got caught I would face jail or even death,” explained one unnamed rhino poacher.

It is the same motivation that years earlier had led Big Foot into a shebeen in the Mozambican border town of Magude to talk to a middleman about earning some money as the triggerman on a rhino poaching team.

“The people who do the hunting take the biggest risks but they are the lowest paid,” says Newton, who was also involved in the study that appeared in the report titled The people beyond the poaching.

In the report, the researchers stated that more emphasis should be placed on arresting those further up the rhino horn supply chain.

“[You need] better collaboration between different law enforcement agencies, both nationally and internationally, specifically to target the more senior offenders, as opposed to low-level offenders such as poachers and drivers,” says Moneron.

There also needed to be better cooperation between government institutions and the private sector, in particular the finance sector so as to follow illicit money trails. This, the authors said, requires the use of technology such as cellphone tracking and mining social networks.

Another important component in the fight against rhino poaching, they stressed, is combating corruption.

But today the world’s focus will once again be on rhinos and there is some reason to celebrate. The number of poaching incidents continues on a downward trend, which started even before the Covid lockdowns. But serious damage has already been done, for there are fewer white rhinos around today then there were a decade ago. DM

[Richprins]