No worries, mate. I was taking a poke at Okie.
Re: Free roaming and expecting a cut:
(I'm afraid I have to provide some background first)
My little part in this is independently funded by aviation businesses, aviation enthusiasts and ourselves. We provide free air support to all anti-poaching forces in the Sabisand, Manyeleti, Timbavati, Klaserie, Balule and a number of smaller reserves. We're quite busy.
One of many teams we operate with. In this case, a team from Protrack.
Rhino and other charismatic megafauna move freely between Kruger and these reserves and, by agreement, the reserves must take care of these animals while they're in their area of responsibility. The individual property owners within these reserves are now faced with a large security bill. I would say much larger than they anticipated when they invested in their properties. They also didn't know they'd be in for a counter-insugency war, with armed uniformed men roaming their private land and aircraft circling overhead. All this for protecting a national asset, not their own animals. The wardens, instead of devoting their time and expertise to veld management and important stuff that wardens are expected to do, spend much of their time being area commanders of private armies.
In-house rangers and student rangers in the Umbabat:
In spite of this, an inordinate number of rhinos are being poached on these lands. A security analyst recently pointed out that it is puzzling that this area, which has a much higher staff-on-the-ground density than Kruger, is suffering a higher concentration of rhino mortality. That just smacks of corruption doesn't it? Well, there is a little truth in such suspicions because, as I pointed out, some crooked staff have been caught out and one can expect there will always be more. The larger, and glaringly obvious reason is that these lands are the Western Front Line of Kruger. There is a population of a million people living in peri-urban conditions along the convoluted western boundaries of these reserves, with multiple access gates and 100's of km of boundary to patrol. A band of poachers would much rather do their work close to the boundary they breached, to have a good chance of escaping. Of course they're not going to walk all the way through the Timbavati, say, to Kruger if their quarry can be seen from the fence (as they all too often are). With all the convolutions the western boundary lines total more than 500km. The private reserves I mentioned are taking care of about 200km of a westward-displaced border, thereby forming a buffer between Kruger and the densely populated part of the Lowveld.
Google Earth Image with the western boundary of Sabisand and Manyeleti drawn in yellow.
Now, on the Eastern boundary Kruger is facing the mammoth task of trying to maintain the integrity of a 350km+ (by my quick estimate) boundary with Mozambique and with a lower staff density on the ground. Many, if not most incursions into Kruger itself are presently from there and the poacher bands roam deep into our National Park.
Then there's KZN, with multiple parks, scattered over a large area and each of them surrounded by "hostile" borders. I don't have figures, but during a briefing in Hluhluwe, I was astounded by the scale of their border problem. Kudos to that province for opening its coffers to the funding of anti-poaching.
With this rough sketch of the battleground and deployments above, I can get back to "Expecting a Cut".
No, I and my small operation do not expect a cut. We source our own donations from the aviation community. However, I see a great need for more support to the reserves we serve.
At this point I must acknowledge some of the support that is already in place.
SANParks is funding a large project whereby Environmental Monitors (EM's)are recruited, trained and deployed in the reserves and communities adjoining Kruger and other National Parks. Most are youngsters who deal with veld monitoring, erosion control and the like, but many are trained and eventually armed for anti-poaching duty as well.
A newly qualified team of EM's on their deployment day.
A welcome trickle of funds and equipment from the various funding drives is finding its way to the reserves I serve. When I say "trickle" I'm talking of an occasional injection in the order of R100 000. A lot of money, but relatively little compared to the overall flow of "rhino funds" and relatively little compared to what the land owners are forking out.
R100k worth of equipment to member reserves of Game Reserves United from Jacaranda FM via StopRhinoPoaching.com.
Bottom line, I'm told, is that I have put faith in the national prioritization strategy for the appropriate allocation of the funds we are talking about here.
