Rhino Poaching 2013
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Penga Ndlovu
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Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
We will see.
"Longing for the bush is a luxury many have.
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
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Sprocky
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Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
There will apparently be a documentary on 50/50 tonight to do with rhino poaching and what is being done about it in KNP.
Sometimes it’s not until you don’t see what you want to see, that you truly open your eyes.
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Penga Ndlovu
- Posts: 2400
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 9:38 pm
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Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
Simon Bloch
The rhino census has been completed at Kruger National Park and there are strong rumors among conservation circles that the rhino population has either been previously grossly overestimated or the poaching figures greatly under-reported.
The previous claim of 8000-12000, (so much room for margin of error just does not hold water any longer) needs to be clarified under closer scrutiny.
A meeting with the parliamentary portfolio committee is scheduled for this weekend.
Sunday Tribune 6 January 2013
Where have they all gone?
SIMON BLOCH and IVOR POWELL
It is a typically dry and recondite graph, buried deep in a peer-reviewed academic treatise: fixed and dotted lines meandering, spiking and dipping without any obvious purpose as they navigate and plot their position on the "x" and "y" axes. Footnoted explanatory keys confuse the general reader more than they illuminate.
But what it says when you boil it down is devastating:
• Less than three years from now, by 2015, the South African rhino population in the Kruger National Park will enter a negative growth phase; more rhinos will be killed |off by poachers than are |being bred.
• And unless that pattern is reversed, only five years later - by 2020 - there will be no |rhinos left in the Kruger Park at all.
In the doomsday scenario that emerges from the dry scientific prose of Dr Sam Ferreira, large mammal ecologist for SANParks at Kruger National Park, and a group of co-researchers in the September 2012 edition of the scientific journal PLOS ONE, the world's premier rhino breeding programme will be no more.
Right now South Africa accounts for no less than 73 percent of the global population of the threatened species, and while some breeding programmes might persist by 2020 in private reserves, these are equally under threat. According to official figures released on December 19 last year, increasingly organised poaching syndicates had officially accounted for 633 rhino deaths in 2012. By the end of the year that number was expected to rise above 660. The official total lost to poaching last year will be announced tomorrow.
But the Department of Environmental Affairs figures do not tell the whole story.
The Sunday Tribune has established that no reliable census of rhino populations was undertaken in 2012, as promised by minister Edna Molewa. Funded by international agencies, such annual census programmes involve systematic and scientifically controlled overflights co-ordinated with trackers and teams on the ground, and are considered vital to achieve accurate population counts.
But late last year, at the height of the poaching crisis, the census that was supposed to have taken place during the dry season was called off early due to a faulty helicopter and earlier than expected rainfall, which led to rapid canopy and vegetation growth. Visibility conditions at a later stage made continuing the census a non-viable exercise, leaving these statistics unreliable from the outset.
But even without the detailed census, more than 420 rhinos were believed to have been killed for their horns in the Kruger Park in 2012 - up from ë in 2011 and 146 in 2010. This does not include the count of animals that wandered across the border into Mozambique, only to fall prey to the poachers' bullets and axes on foreign soil. This represents a dramatic increase of close to 48 percent over 2011.
According to Dr Richard Emslie, of the African Rhino Specialist group, legal internal trade in live rhinos in South Africa is also being undermined.
"Although private rhino owners in South Africa conserve more rhinos than there are in the rest of Africa, the escalation in poaching has significantly increased security costs and risks to rhinos and staff. This has led to a decline in live rhino sale prices from 2008 to 2011, with an estimated decline of $63 million (R542m) in the value of the country's white rhino.
"In 2012, white rhino live sales are expected to decline further. At the same time, the number of private rhino owners in South Africa disinvesting in rhinos has increased.
"There is concern that the move away from rhino ownership may ultimately threaten the biological management of white rhinos, as the private sector greatly contributed to the rapid increase in numbers in the past.
"The escalating poaching threat combined with declining financial incentives threaten to curtail, and may ultimately reverse the expansion of, rhino range and numbers in South Africa. Reduced live sales may also seriously affect conservation budgets of both state agencies and private sector owners at the very time increased resources are needed to support rhino protection," said Emslie.
In 2011 the International Union for Conservation of Nature formally declared as extinct the Western Black Rhinoceros, a subspecies of the black rhino once plentiful in the sub-Saharan savannahs centred in Cameroon. In 2010 the last known specimen of the Asian rhinoceros was killed in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, at the end of 2012, amid allegations of official collusion in the progressive massacre of the reserve's once-thriving rhino population, concerns began to circulate that the last rhino in the Hwange National Park in neighbouring Zimbabwe had been killed for its horn.
Investigations by Independent Newspapers established that although this was not in fact the case - there may be four rhinos still surviving of the hundreds that once roamed the reserve - their future was hanging by a thread.
Conservationists mainly have linked the impending crisis in Zimbabwe directly to the granting of mining concessions to Chinese enterprises in recent years, as well as the influx of Asian immigrants to the region.
"If we don't put the measures in place now, the animals will be extinct in the next couple of years," said Johnny Rodrigues of The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. "Mining licences are handed out without any controls, and this poses a serious threat to the environment.
"There is no order, there is no control. This is just about taking as much as they can, and getting rich quick while they can. There are as many as 10 mineral and coal mining concessions around Hwange, including a colliery inside the park. The foreign nationals have been paying indigenous locals to poach the rhinos for horns, which they then smuggle out of the country," said Rodrigues.
Several Chinese nationals connected to Zimbabwean government officials have been linked by international authorities in recent years to smuggling ivory tusks and rhinoceros horn.
Also a shocker is the 2009 revelation of a poaching cartel known as "The Crocodile Gang". This group was accused of slaughtering rhinos and elephants to fulfil "requests" for horn and ivory by Chinese syndicates closely connected with the government.
Behind an "industrial-scale slaughter" of black rhinos, the "godfather" of the poaching cartel was revealed to be none other than Emmerson Mnangagwa - known by locals now as "The Crocodile".
Also referred to as "The Butcher of Matabeleland", he is the architect of Zimbabwe's terrifying state security apparatus, creator of Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Office - and rumoured to be next in line for president after Robert Mugabe.
In contrast, across the border with Botswana, the picture is markedly different.
Because of the hardline stance taken by the administration of Ian Khama, and with the army playing a key role in enforcing conservation laws, Botswana is rapidly becoming known as a country that is driving the change for a new conservation model in 21st century Africa.
President Khama recently announced hunting would be banned there from 2014, and that the country would pursue a strong eco-tourism ethos and strategy. Just last week Zambia followed suit and also announced it intended banning trophy hunting.
After the rhino was declared extinct or near-extinct on two occasions in the country since the 1980s, Khama, who serves as a patron of the country's rhino breeding programmes, set a goal of bolstering the population to more than 500 by 2020.
At the most recent count there were just over 100 rhinos in Botswana's conservancies.
Late last year the Al Jazeera network broadcast a chilling documentary titled The Last Rhino, in which the film-makers crossed the South African |border from the Kruger |Park into Mozambique.
Here they found whole communities, still with access to weaponry from the country's civil wars, whose livelihood and economy depended entirely on poaching rhino in South Africa.
While African nations and their leaders look to the East for economic aid, trade opportunity and infrastructure creation, the mother continent's wildlife and its iconic creatures are looking to the West for their survival against extinction.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned of an expanding "new colonialism" sweeping across the African continent.
One that she says is being carried out by "foreign investors" and governments who seek only to exploit the continent's natural resources.
Africa's natural resources have become fair game for "foreign investors" and governments - which happens to have been increasingly noticed in the growing Chinese footprint across Africa.
The rhino census has been completed at Kruger National Park and there are strong rumors among conservation circles that the rhino population has either been previously grossly overestimated or the poaching figures greatly under-reported.
The previous claim of 8000-12000, (so much room for margin of error just does not hold water any longer) needs to be clarified under closer scrutiny.
A meeting with the parliamentary portfolio committee is scheduled for this weekend.
Sunday Tribune 6 January 2013
Where have they all gone?
SIMON BLOCH and IVOR POWELL
It is a typically dry and recondite graph, buried deep in a peer-reviewed academic treatise: fixed and dotted lines meandering, spiking and dipping without any obvious purpose as they navigate and plot their position on the "x" and "y" axes. Footnoted explanatory keys confuse the general reader more than they illuminate.
But what it says when you boil it down is devastating:
• Less than three years from now, by 2015, the South African rhino population in the Kruger National Park will enter a negative growth phase; more rhinos will be killed |off by poachers than are |being bred.
• And unless that pattern is reversed, only five years later - by 2020 - there will be no |rhinos left in the Kruger Park at all.
In the doomsday scenario that emerges from the dry scientific prose of Dr Sam Ferreira, large mammal ecologist for SANParks at Kruger National Park, and a group of co-researchers in the September 2012 edition of the scientific journal PLOS ONE, the world's premier rhino breeding programme will be no more.
Right now South Africa accounts for no less than 73 percent of the global population of the threatened species, and while some breeding programmes might persist by 2020 in private reserves, these are equally under threat. According to official figures released on December 19 last year, increasingly organised poaching syndicates had officially accounted for 633 rhino deaths in 2012. By the end of the year that number was expected to rise above 660. The official total lost to poaching last year will be announced tomorrow.
But the Department of Environmental Affairs figures do not tell the whole story.
The Sunday Tribune has established that no reliable census of rhino populations was undertaken in 2012, as promised by minister Edna Molewa. Funded by international agencies, such annual census programmes involve systematic and scientifically controlled overflights co-ordinated with trackers and teams on the ground, and are considered vital to achieve accurate population counts.
But late last year, at the height of the poaching crisis, the census that was supposed to have taken place during the dry season was called off early due to a faulty helicopter and earlier than expected rainfall, which led to rapid canopy and vegetation growth. Visibility conditions at a later stage made continuing the census a non-viable exercise, leaving these statistics unreliable from the outset.
But even without the detailed census, more than 420 rhinos were believed to have been killed for their horns in the Kruger Park in 2012 - up from ë in 2011 and 146 in 2010. This does not include the count of animals that wandered across the border into Mozambique, only to fall prey to the poachers' bullets and axes on foreign soil. This represents a dramatic increase of close to 48 percent over 2011.
According to Dr Richard Emslie, of the African Rhino Specialist group, legal internal trade in live rhinos in South Africa is also being undermined.
"Although private rhino owners in South Africa conserve more rhinos than there are in the rest of Africa, the escalation in poaching has significantly increased security costs and risks to rhinos and staff. This has led to a decline in live rhino sale prices from 2008 to 2011, with an estimated decline of $63 million (R542m) in the value of the country's white rhino.
"In 2012, white rhino live sales are expected to decline further. At the same time, the number of private rhino owners in South Africa disinvesting in rhinos has increased.
"There is concern that the move away from rhino ownership may ultimately threaten the biological management of white rhinos, as the private sector greatly contributed to the rapid increase in numbers in the past.
"The escalating poaching threat combined with declining financial incentives threaten to curtail, and may ultimately reverse the expansion of, rhino range and numbers in South Africa. Reduced live sales may also seriously affect conservation budgets of both state agencies and private sector owners at the very time increased resources are needed to support rhino protection," said Emslie.
In 2011 the International Union for Conservation of Nature formally declared as extinct the Western Black Rhinoceros, a subspecies of the black rhino once plentiful in the sub-Saharan savannahs centred in Cameroon. In 2010 the last known specimen of the Asian rhinoceros was killed in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, at the end of 2012, amid allegations of official collusion in the progressive massacre of the reserve's once-thriving rhino population, concerns began to circulate that the last rhino in the Hwange National Park in neighbouring Zimbabwe had been killed for its horn.
Investigations by Independent Newspapers established that although this was not in fact the case - there may be four rhinos still surviving of the hundreds that once roamed the reserve - their future was hanging by a thread.
Conservationists mainly have linked the impending crisis in Zimbabwe directly to the granting of mining concessions to Chinese enterprises in recent years, as well as the influx of Asian immigrants to the region.
"If we don't put the measures in place now, the animals will be extinct in the next couple of years," said Johnny Rodrigues of The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. "Mining licences are handed out without any controls, and this poses a serious threat to the environment.
"There is no order, there is no control. This is just about taking as much as they can, and getting rich quick while they can. There are as many as 10 mineral and coal mining concessions around Hwange, including a colliery inside the park. The foreign nationals have been paying indigenous locals to poach the rhinos for horns, which they then smuggle out of the country," said Rodrigues.
Several Chinese nationals connected to Zimbabwean government officials have been linked by international authorities in recent years to smuggling ivory tusks and rhinoceros horn.
Also a shocker is the 2009 revelation of a poaching cartel known as "The Crocodile Gang". This group was accused of slaughtering rhinos and elephants to fulfil "requests" for horn and ivory by Chinese syndicates closely connected with the government.
Behind an "industrial-scale slaughter" of black rhinos, the "godfather" of the poaching cartel was revealed to be none other than Emmerson Mnangagwa - known by locals now as "The Crocodile".
Also referred to as "The Butcher of Matabeleland", he is the architect of Zimbabwe's terrifying state security apparatus, creator of Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Office - and rumoured to be next in line for president after Robert Mugabe.
In contrast, across the border with Botswana, the picture is markedly different.
Because of the hardline stance taken by the administration of Ian Khama, and with the army playing a key role in enforcing conservation laws, Botswana is rapidly becoming known as a country that is driving the change for a new conservation model in 21st century Africa.
President Khama recently announced hunting would be banned there from 2014, and that the country would pursue a strong eco-tourism ethos and strategy. Just last week Zambia followed suit and also announced it intended banning trophy hunting.
After the rhino was declared extinct or near-extinct on two occasions in the country since the 1980s, Khama, who serves as a patron of the country's rhino breeding programmes, set a goal of bolstering the population to more than 500 by 2020.
At the most recent count there were just over 100 rhinos in Botswana's conservancies.
Late last year the Al Jazeera network broadcast a chilling documentary titled The Last Rhino, in which the film-makers crossed the South African |border from the Kruger |Park into Mozambique.
Here they found whole communities, still with access to weaponry from the country's civil wars, whose livelihood and economy depended entirely on poaching rhino in South Africa.
While African nations and their leaders look to the East for economic aid, trade opportunity and infrastructure creation, the mother continent's wildlife and its iconic creatures are looking to the West for their survival against extinction.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned of an expanding "new colonialism" sweeping across the African continent.
One that she says is being carried out by "foreign investors" and governments who seek only to exploit the continent's natural resources.
Africa's natural resources have become fair game for "foreign investors" and governments - which happens to have been increasingly noticed in the growing Chinese footprint across Africa.
"Longing for the bush is a luxury many have.
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
-
Duke
Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
SA aims to cut rhino poaching by 20% a year
2013-11-26 22:47
Mbombela - Conservation authorities on Tuesday said they aim to reduce rhino poaching by 20% a year, insisting their strategy is working despite record levels of poaching.
"The war against poaching is not yet won, but we can reduce the figures... it's an ongoing process," said Major General Johan Jooste, who heads the Kruger National Park anti-poaching task team.
The number of rhino killed this year for their horns has hit a record 860 so far, despite the deployment of the army and the use of helicopters and drone patrols.
The vast two-million hectare Kruger National Park has experienced the largest number of killings.
Jooste admitted there were still daily killings but said "with the increased intelligence operations, we aim to cut poaching numbers by 20% a year".
He was adamant that its multi-pronged approach is making a difference.
"It might look like we are not winning, but we are making a difference," said Jooste.
"The war against poaching can not only be won in the bush, the law needs to take its course as well when it comes to prosecuting the syndicates," he said.
Jooste said he would like to see increased co-operation between South Africa and Mozambique, adopting stricter measures to fighter poaching.
Mozambique currently has limited laws against poaching, making it a breeding ground for those who slip through the porous 360km border with South Africa.
A spokesperson for the South African National Parks, Ike Phaahla, said that army patrols had made a significance in the park since they were started in 2010.
"If it wasn't for the army we would have no rhino in the park by now, the rangers would have had a difficult time keeping up with the poachers' paramilitary tactics."
South Africa is home to 80% of the world's rhino population, estimated at around 25 000.
Rhino in the Kruger Park are estimated to number between 8 500 and 9 500, according to a 2012 count.
In May, the South African authorities said they would re-erect the border fence, equipped with a special detection system in a bid to curb poaching.
Fencing in some parts of the border was pulled down to create a cross-border park with Mozambique.
2013-11-26 22:47
Mbombela - Conservation authorities on Tuesday said they aim to reduce rhino poaching by 20% a year, insisting their strategy is working despite record levels of poaching.
"The war against poaching is not yet won, but we can reduce the figures... it's an ongoing process," said Major General Johan Jooste, who heads the Kruger National Park anti-poaching task team.
The number of rhino killed this year for their horns has hit a record 860 so far, despite the deployment of the army and the use of helicopters and drone patrols.
The vast two-million hectare Kruger National Park has experienced the largest number of killings.
Jooste admitted there were still daily killings but said "with the increased intelligence operations, we aim to cut poaching numbers by 20% a year".
He was adamant that its multi-pronged approach is making a difference.
"It might look like we are not winning, but we are making a difference," said Jooste.
"The war against poaching can not only be won in the bush, the law needs to take its course as well when it comes to prosecuting the syndicates," he said.
Jooste said he would like to see increased co-operation between South Africa and Mozambique, adopting stricter measures to fighter poaching.
Mozambique currently has limited laws against poaching, making it a breeding ground for those who slip through the porous 360km border with South Africa.
A spokesperson for the South African National Parks, Ike Phaahla, said that army patrols had made a significance in the park since they were started in 2010.
"If it wasn't for the army we would have no rhino in the park by now, the rangers would have had a difficult time keeping up with the poachers' paramilitary tactics."
South Africa is home to 80% of the world's rhino population, estimated at around 25 000.
Rhino in the Kruger Park are estimated to number between 8 500 and 9 500, according to a 2012 count.
In May, the South African authorities said they would re-erect the border fence, equipped with a special detection system in a bid to curb poaching.
Fencing in some parts of the border was pulled down to create a cross-border park with Mozambique.
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Richprins
- Committee Member
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Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
That was interesting, Sprocks! They mentioned twice that 1000 rhino had been lost already this year...although it may have been lost in translation that that was the expected number. Sounded like the former, though!Sprocky wrote:There will apparently be a documentary on 50/50 tonight to do with rhino poaching and what is being done about it in KNP.
Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
They keep on talking about reducing poaching by 20 % per year 
Now , if there are 10 000 rhinos around , and 1000 get poached , ND THEREFORE TOTAL NUMBER RHINO NUMBERS ARE REDUCED BY 10 % , and next year there will only be 9000 left . If poaching remains the same % wise to population , does that mean that poaching is down by 10 %
Sorry guys , but I am rather pessimistic when it comes to listening to officials with their number spinning
Now , if there are 10 000 rhinos around , and 1000 get poached , ND THEREFORE TOTAL NUMBER RHINO NUMBERS ARE REDUCED BY 10 % , and next year there will only be 9000 left . If poaching remains the same % wise to population , does that mean that poaching is down by 10 %
Sorry guys , but I am rather pessimistic when it comes to listening to officials with their number spinning
Enough is enough
Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
okie wrote:They keep on talking about reducing poaching by 20 % per year
Now , if there are 10 000 rhinos around , and 1000 get poached , ND THEREFORE TOTAL NUMBER RHINO NUMBERS ARE REDUCED BY 10 % , and next year there will only be 9000 left . If poaching remains the same % wise to population , does that mean that poaching is down by 10 %
Sorry guys , but I am rather pessimistic when it comes to listening to officials with their number spinning
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Penga Ndlovu
- Posts: 2400
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 9:38 pm
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Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
892
Not going to say anything anymore about whatever Sanfarts or DEA are feeding us.
Just going to enjoy the last Rhinos while they are still here.
I am through with it.
I have followed the devestation of these dinosaurs very closely over the last few years and I am getting to the point that it is getting too much.
I have tried everything I can to ease this pain by trying to set up an anti- poaching ring, raise awareness, supply info to units that can do something about this, but every step of the way I get fought against and I have had it.
If someone wants to take over the torch they can be my guest.
I am through watching an iconic species die out and not be able to do a damn thing about it because I am a foreigner and get fought against every step of the way.
Not going to say anything anymore about whatever Sanfarts or DEA are feeding us.
Just going to enjoy the last Rhinos while they are still here.
I am through with it.
I have followed the devestation of these dinosaurs very closely over the last few years and I am getting to the point that it is getting too much.
I have tried everything I can to ease this pain by trying to set up an anti- poaching ring, raise awareness, supply info to units that can do something about this, but every step of the way I get fought against and I have had it.
If someone wants to take over the torch they can be my guest.
I am through watching an iconic species die out and not be able to do a damn thing about it because I am a foreigner and get fought against every step of the way.
"Longing for the bush is a luxury many have.
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
-
Penga Ndlovu
- Posts: 2400
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 9:38 pm
- Country: Bush area
- Location: Grietjie Nature Reserve, Phalaborwa
- Contact:
Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
Oh yeah.
Lest I forget.
It is now 548 in Kruger.
So much for the multi million Rand fence and all the good intentions of those fighting the forces of evil.
Lest I forget.
It is now 548 in Kruger.
So much for the multi million Rand fence and all the good intentions of those fighting the forces of evil.
"Longing for the bush is a luxury many have.
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
Living in the bush is a luxury that only a few have"
-
Sprocky
- Posts: 7110
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Re: Rhino Poaching 2013
Hey bud, I understand how you feel, but please keep posting the figures for us. It is always bad news and we don't hold anything against you, but we need to be kept up to date. 
Sometimes it’s not until you don’t see what you want to see, that you truly open your eyes.