Rhino Poaching 2017-2025

[Richprins]

Relentless poaching sees more rhinos killed
By TimesLIVE - 27 February 2024 - 13:50

Environmental minister Barbara Creecy says government is renewing its strategies to combat the “relentless pressure” wrought by poachers on the rhino population.

This as 51 more rhinos were slaughtered for their horns in 2023 compared with the year before.

Of the 499 rhinos poached last year, 406 were killed on state properties and 93 at privately owned parks, reserves and farms.


“The pressure has again been felt in KwaZulu-Natal with Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park facing the brunt of poaching cases, losing 307 of the total national poaching loss,” the minister said.

“This is the highest poaching loss within this province.

“While KwaZulu-Natal recorded 49 arrests and 13 firearms seized, multidisciplinary teams continue to work tirelessly in an attempt to slow the relentless pressure,” Creecy said.

Kruger National Park recorded a 37% decrease from 2022 with a total of 78 rhinos poached in 2023. No rhinos were poached in any other national parks.

Creecy commended the Hawks for regional and transnational engagements to enhance government’s integrated approach to combat wildlife trafficking.

“Responsible partnerships between the public and private sectors and the financial and transporting sectors remain critical in combating international wildlife trafficking,” she said.

The approach is not exclusive to South Africa and is followed within the region and transnationally, working with the transit and end-user countries in Southeast Asia, especially China, Singapore, Qatar, Malaysia and Vietnam.

In the past year, verdicts were handed down in 36 rhino poaching cases, of which 35 resulted in guilty verdicts and one not guilty verdict. The cases resulted in the conviction of 45 accused rhino poachers and traffickers with a conviction rate of 97%.

Creecy said the directorate of public prosecutions' environmental working group meets on a biannual basis to share best practice in the investigation and prosecution of environmental crime, to address challenges , to foster closer collaboration between the provincial conservation authorities dealing with wildlife trafficking cases and to help identify repeat offenders moving around the country.

“Real time information pertaining to arrests is shared, which significantly enhances collaboration between prosecutors and the law enforcement agencies.”

A national environmental cases audit has been conducted to establish the number of cases being dealt with by the National Prosecuting Authority. A consolidated list of investigating instructions pertaining to rhino and abalone cases has been developed to ensure comprehensive investigations are requested.

The department's biodiversity management plans are being revised to provide a strategic approach and detailed action plan to conserving rhino in South Africa and for engaging with range states to the north, Creecy said.

“It consolidates previous work at policy and planning level on rhino management into a single integrated tool to usher in a whole of society approach in the interest of the rhinos and the people of South Africa.”

The revised draft plan will be published in the government gazette for public participation soon.

TimesLIVE


https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/sout ... os-killed/

[Richprins]

Seems the dehorning is not working in Kruger, staff go after the stumps in my opinion, as they are addicted to rhino cash.

[Lisbeth]

It sounds awful

[Lisbeth]

Local business forums squabble over fencing contracts while KZN faces rhino bloodbath


Nearly 500 rhinos were butchered by armed poachers in South Arica last year – mostly in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (Image: Rhino review / Daily Maverick)

By Tony Carnie | 27 Feb 2024

The poaching of KwaZulu-Natal’s rhino population has reached its worst levels yet, with the province accounting for 65% of all rhinos killed nationwide in 2023.
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It has emerged that while poachers were busy plundering one of the country’s biggest state-owned rhino reserves, local “business forums” were squabbling with provincial conservation authorities, demanding a sizeable chunk of a government contract to repair the dilapidated boundary fences of the flagship Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park.

Across the country, 499 rhinos were poached and dehorned last year. Of this total, 325 were killed in KwaZulu-Natal (with 307 of them killed in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park alone), Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said at a media briefing in the village of St Lucia on 27 February.

The current poaching levels in the province are now more than triple that of 2020, when 93 rhinos were slaughtered.


The table gives the provincial and national breakdown for rhino poaching in 2023 compared with 2021 and 2022. (Image: Supplied)

The killing of 325 rhinos in KZN last year also dwarfed casualties for Kruger National Park, where 78 rhinos were shot last year. Kruger is roughly 20 times larger than the 97,000-hectare Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park.

Creecy announced plans in May last year to provide more than R40-million to repair Hluhluwe-iMfolozi’s increasingly porous fence line. She acknowledged that progress on this project had been “slow”.

According to Sihle Mkhize, the chief executive of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, there had been a number of delays in repairing damaged sections of the reserve’s boundary fence.

Mkhize said Ezemvelo was on the point of rolling out the project last year when conservation officials were “confronted” by several local business forums which demanded a 30% cut of the fencing contract.

“They were trying to force us… to get that funding.”


Some of the rhinos found massacred on 8 December 2021, at Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, just outside Cape Town. (Photo: Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve)

However, said Mkhize, following the intervention of local chiefs in the area, Ezemvelo had been able to “resolve all the challenges”.

He did not explicitly say whether Ezemvelo had agreed to provide any funds to the business forums, but said chiefs and community members had made it clear that “they are not going to allow anyone to just demand things and stop implementation of the project”.

After these issues were resolved towards the end of last year, there were further delays due to the large number of local residents wanting to work on the fencing project.

It now appears that Ezemvelo managed to repair less than 11km of fencing last year, with well over 40km still to go.

However, fencing-related delays aside, it remains clear that there are several other factors behind Ezemvelo losing the war against gangs of armed poachers who are killing the province’s rhinos at a rate of almost one a day.

Mkhize said several new interventions were under way. This included the appointment of a new rhino security manager for Ezemvelo with effect from 1 April.

In response to a request from Daily Maverick to disclose his name and details of his experience in rhino security, Ezemvelo said his identity and credentials would be posted on Ezemvelo’s website only once he was formally presented to the board of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife at a meeting on Wednesday.

Ezemvelo did say, however, that the new manager held a postgraduate environmental degree, had worked “in the law-enforcement space” and had experience in anti-poaching operations in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, Mkuze Game Reserve and reserves in the Eastern Cape.

Ezemvelo was confident that the new manager was suitably qualified and experienced to perform the job.

A further weakness in park security was the shortage of field rangers.

Last year, the park had a complement of only 55 field rangers, but this number had been increased to 88 and the vacancy rate was now below 10%.

Last year, Ezemvelo anti-poaching units lacked night vision capability for the helicopter team.

“We have closed that gap,” said Mkhize, adding that the conservation agency was strengthening its integrity-testing procedures for frontline rhino anti-poaching staff, including polygraph testing.

In her feedback report, Creecy said 45 people had been convicted nationally for rhino poaching or trafficking last year – with a conviction rate of 97%.

Arrests included that of a former field ranger who shot and killed a rhino with his R1 rifle in Kruger National Park and failed to report the incident.

“He initially denied that he had discharged his firearm and replaced the ammunition with non-issued ammunition, but ballistic evidence linked his issued firearm to the crime scene.”

During the trial, he claimed that the rhino had charged him. This was rejected by the court and he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail.

In KZN, five people were convicted for killing a rhino, among related offences, and each sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.

In Gauteng, an accused was convicted for the possession of two rhino horns found inside a bag in the vehicle in which he was travelling and was sentenced to five years in jail.
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The table below gives the provincial and national breakdown for rhino poaching in 2023 compared with 2021 and 2022.

Rhino poaching in South Africa
This visualisation shows the provincial breakdown for rhino poaching in 2023 compared to 2021 and 2022.

(To see the chart click on the title and you can visualise it in the original article)
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While the rhino population in this park has been progressively decimated over the past 15 years, Creecy attributed the reduction to “strong collaboration between external stakeholders permanently based in KNP” and attending to various wildlife crime cases such as the Skukuza Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit, Skukuza SAPS and SAPS forensic teams.

There had also been an extensive and ongoing dehorning programme in core areas of Kruger.

Other successful strategies included improved access control, the installation of automated number plate recognition cameras and gate cameras, along with radar detection systems that remotely track any illegal entry by poachers on foot into the KNP.

Significantly, neither Creecy nor Mkhize responded to questions yesterday on whether Ezemvelo is planning to dehorn rhinos in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park – one of the last major South African parks where rhinos are not currently dehorned in an effort to deter poachers.


The carcass of a poached rhino in the Kruger National Park on 8 November 2014. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sunday Times / James Oatway)

Commenting on the latest poaching statistics, the conservation group WWF said the high level of poaching in KZN was a “grave concern”.

To assist Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife interventions, WWF had offered to provide support to improve field ranger capacity through targeted training and improving living conditions for rangers.

The organisation was also assisting Ezemvelo to develop an integrity management plan “to build organisational resilience”.

Jeff Cooke, WWF’s Black Rhino Range Expansion project leader, commented: “The province of KwaZulu-Natal has a proud record of having played a critical role in rhino conservation in South Africa when rhino numbers had dwindled to just a few hundred animals (in the late 1950s).”

In September last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicated that rhino numbers across Africa had increased by 5.2% between 2021 and 2022.

Black rhino numbers rose by 4.2% from 2021 to 6,487 animals. White rhino numbers increased to 16,803 (an increase of 5.6%) for the first time since 2012.

“While these updated IUCN population figures provide hope, these gains remain tenuous as long as the poaching crisis continues,” Cooke said. DM

[Richprins]

They are not business forums, simply criminal enterprises. They are called construction mafia.

[Lisbeth]

Above is the original article, which is easier to read than the page from the newspaper

[Lisbeth]

Two out of three SA white rhinos now in private hands while poachers decimate KZN herds


Rhino at the Tala Collection Game Reserve near Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Jackie Clausen)

By Ed Stoddard | 27 Feb 2024

As the rhino poaching crisis pivots to KwaZulu-Natal’s shoddily managed state-owned parks and reserves, South Africa’s population of the pachyderms is effectively being privatised.
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The percentage of South African rhinos in private hands keeps growing, even as the overall population falls in the face of the poaching onslaught for the animals’ coveted horns.

Pelham Jones, head of the Private Rhino Owners’ Association (Proa), told Daily Maverick that Proa estimates its members now have more than 8,000 white rhinos roaming their properties, or about 65% of the national herd. That’s up from an estimate of 60% last year.

Proa also estimates that about 750 black rhinos, or close to 40% of that population, are privately owned in South Africa.

The main reason for the growing private percentage is the decline of populations in the hands of the government, notably in KZN, where poachers have taken advantage of a provincial wildlife authority that is a shambolic shell of its former self – one of many tragic examples of state failure.

The latest rhino poaching stats, unveiled on Tuesday by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), once again highlight the fact that private owners are doing a far better job of protecting their herds despite soaring security costs.

“During 2023, 499 rhinos were poached across South Africa, 406 were killed on state properties and 93 on privately owned parks/reserves/farms. This was an increase of 51 in comparison to 448 rhinos poached in 2022,” the DFFE said.

The Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park has replaced the Kruger National Park as the epicentre of the poaching crisis, fuelled by Asian demand for rhino horn for ornamental carving and bogus medicinal purposes.

Hluhluwe lost a startling 307 rhinos to poachers last year, almost one a day.

As my colleague Tony Carnie reports, local “business forums” have been squabbling with provincial conservation authorities, demanding a chunk of a government contract to patch up the dilapidated boundary fences of the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park.

In other words, the “procurement mafia” has aided and abetted the slaughter of KZN’s rhinos.

But with well over half of the national white rhino herd, private owners lost 93 of the pachyderms last year – less than 20% of the poaching total.

South Africa’s rhino population is effectively being privatised because of state failure.

This is a reflection in some ways of wider trends, such as households and businesses installing solar panels on their roofs because of Eskom’s unreliability.

Whether it’s power generation or rhino conservation, it is the private sector that is stepping into the breach when the state falters.

In 2020, when there were 394 recorded rhino deaths linked to poaching, 37 of the pachyderms were killed on private reserves and farms – less than 10% of the total.

In 2021, 124 of the 451 rhinos illegally killed in South Africa were privately owned animals, a rise of more than three-fold that accounted for 27.5% of the total.

But in 2022, private sector losses fell back below 20% as KZN’s state parks became increasingly targeted.

Fears for private herds
One concern is that having mowed down much of the Kruger population and with the KZN state herd now under relentless pressure, the poachers’ sights will swing to private land at a time when owners have less incentive to maintain their herds.

Security costs are growing, while private demand for rhinos is anything but robust.

John Hume, who bred a herd of 2,000 white rhinos, was forced to sell his animals and ranch last year to the NGO African Parks for financial reasons.

African Parks – which plans to relocate the animals to former range states – clearly has donors with deep pockets, but few, if any, of the other private rhino owners in South Africa can tap such sources for funding.

“We pick up from the intelligence circles that interest in private reserves is growing,” Proa’s Jones told Daily Maverick.

“The only thing that’s saving us is that private reserves are doing an exceptionally good job in securing their populations, but at a huge and unaffordable cost.”

Jones reiterated Proa’s call for a transparent and legal trade in rhino horn – which grows back after being harvested if the animal is darted and alive rather than gunned down – to meet Asian demand.

Lifting the global ban on horn trade is seen as one way to provide private rhino owners with an incentive to keep forking out the costs of maintaining and growing their herds.

But that can only be ironed out at the Conference of the Parties meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species held every two or three years, and such proposals always face stiff resistance.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s rhino population is gradually being privatised – a trend that may not remain on its current trajectory. DM

[Lisbeth]

Wildlife crime: Rhino poaching levels remain dire, but good news from Kruger


Chief executive of the Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation Sharon Haussmann. | Environmental education manager and community engagement specialist for the Kruger2Canyon Biosphere Region Vusi Tshabalala. // Wildlife crime researcher Julian Rademeyer. (Photos: Supplied)

By Fred Kockott | 12 Mar 2024

Innovative collaborations that help address wildlife crime in the Kruger area are to come under the spotlight this week.
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Wildlife crime is complex, with no silver bullet as a solution. It’s entangled in the very fabric of our society. But there are conservation success stories that need to be told, especially in the Greater Kruger area.

Could such success stories be replicated elsewhere in South Africa and beyond?

This is the subject of a series of Khetha webinars on wildlife organised by Jive Media Africa with support from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).


(Image: Supplied)

The webinar series intends to foster dialogue and seek solutions by bringing together experts and journalists to deepen the understanding of the illegal wildlife trade.

Khetha story grants

Khetha 2024 story grants ranging from R10,000 to R50,000 are on offer to journalists who present thought-provoking story proposals that spark new narratives about wildlife trade and its broader social context.

In the first Khetha webinar, now dubbed Shades of Grey, seasoned wildlife crime researcher Julian Rademeyer and conservationist and community relations fundi Vusi Tshabalala stressed that corruption, a breakdown of effective governance and a failure to engage properly with people on the ground had contributed to high levels of wildlife crime in and around the Kruger National Park.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Shades of grey — why wildlife crime is proving complicated and hard to beat

WWF’s Lara Rall also made the point that legislation governing the illegal wildlife trade was only as good as the paper it’s written on unless it’s legitimate in the eyes of the people it’s supposed to govern, and provided that “enforcement is swift, fair and certain”.

Innovative projects

Now, in the next Khetha webinar, taking place on Wednesday, 13 March between 1pm and 2pm, Rademeyer will chat to Sharon Haussmann, chief executive of the Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation (GKEPF) about innovative projects and strategies that are having a positive impact.

The GKEPF was established in 2016 to help combat environmental crime in the Greater Kruger area.

In an interview ahead of the webinar, Haussmann said recent conservation successes bear testimony to the levels of cooperation between conservationists.

Haussmann referred to recently released rhino poaching figures which showed a 37% decrease in poaching in the Kruger Park last year compared with 2022.

Over the same period, said Haussmann, private reserves bordering the park recorded the lowest rhino poaching levels (nine animals lost) since the crisis began around 2008.


GKEPF chief executive Sharon Haussmann assists in moving rhino calves to orphanages after their mothers have been killed. (Photo: Supplied)

While this is good news, Haussmann stressed that there was no time for complacency as criminal syndicates were shifting their attention to other parts of the country.

Grave national situation

She said the national situation remained grave, with rhino poaching figures up in 2023 (55 more than in 2022, for a total of 499 animals killed), as poachers increasingly turned to KwaZulu-Natal.

Rademeyer, who has written extensively on the rhino horn trade, agreed with Haussmann.

Rademeyer’s research as a director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime reveals a strong convergence of the illegal wildlife trade with other forms of organised crime, including illegal mining, cash-in-transit heists and human trafficking.

The reality was that organised crime would continue to target and exploit vulnerable people on the boundaries of provincial and national parks, said Haussmann.

“And that’s not conservation’s problem alone,” she added.

Rademeyer also argues that wildlife crime is inextricably connected to a history of dispossession, deep-seated inequality and ineffective local governance and social development.

Cohesion and awareness

It is against this backdrop that Wednesday’s webinar assumes significance, particularly in what could be learnt from specific strategies that are working in the Kruger area.

This includes a GKEPF programme aimed at building the skills and awareness of prosecutors and aligning approaches to prosecute wildlife crime cases.

In early January, the foundation hosted 24 prosecutors and investigating officers from Mpumalanga and Limpopo at a workshop to increase knowledge about investigating and prosecuting wildlife crime.

Rademeyer has commended the initiative, saying that convictions for wildlife crimes depended on an in-depth understanding of applicable laws and regulations, as well as cooperation between relevant law enforcement agencies.

Outreach

But it’s not just on the law enforcement front that GKEPF is having an impact.

A growing number of partner organisations have projects that help build social cohesion and resilience to crime in communities.


Sports projects in the Greater Kruger area aim to build social cohesion to help address crime and influence pro-conservation behaviour. (Photo: GKEPF)

For example, last year GKEPF expanded its community-based sports programme to include netball, and created a formalised league, donating kits and balls to 20 teams.

Rademeyer said there were valuable lessons to be learnt from these and other outreach activities, as well as the GKEPF’s management strategy.

Integrity management

“As with everything, it comes down to management,” said Haussmann, reflecting on how the GKEPF had assisted its member reserves (and the national park itself) to achieve an “incredibly cohesive and coordinated response” to wildlife crime.

Haussmann said integrity management, ranger morale and wellness were key to addressing endangered wildlife crime, as was efficient maintenance of perimeter fences and access control.

She said it was equally vital for all national and provincial parks and reserves to attend to internal matters and get their houses in order.

To learn more about some of the Greater Kruger’s recipes for success, click here to register for Wednesday’s Khetha webinar, Good News from the Kruger.

To apply for a Khetha 2024 story grant, click here.

The Khetha editorial team is looking for thought-provoking story proposals that challenge parochial and international perceptions of wildlife trade in the Greater Kruger region.

“We shall also support story projects on successful conservation initiatives and projects that give voice to people in communities adjacent to the Kruger National Park who have previously been excluded from discussions on wildlife crime and its social impact,” said Jive Media Africa director Robert Inglis. DM

Fred Kockott is the director of Roving Reporters which manages the New Narratives ’24 online training course – a journalism training initiative aligned with the Khetha 2024 Story Project.

Additional reporting by Matthew Hattingh and Yves Vanderhaeghen.

For more information about the Khetha 2024 Story Project contact Liryn de Jager at liryn@jivemedia.co.za, cc to fredk@rovingreporters.co.za

[Richprins]

Social projects are not going to help. Simple law enforcement is!

[Lisbeth]