Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

[Toko]

Rhino extinction in Mozambique game park rings poaching alarm

MAPUTO, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The authorities of a southern Mozambican game park on Tuesday said no rhinos were left in the park due to rampant poaching which involves some of the game park rangers.
Antonio Abacar, the administrator of Limpopo National Park, told local media that 30 rangers are to be taken to court soon after their cases are ready. There used to be 300 rhinos in the conservation area bordering South Africa.
He said the last 15 rhinos were killed last month.
"Many tourists, Mozambicans and foreigners enjoyed seeing rhinos and elephants in the park," he said, adding that elephants are also in danger of extinction in the Limopo park.
A fortnight ago, the World Wild Fund (WWF) said that Mozambique lost 2,500 elephants to poachers in the past two years for the illegal ivory trade.
It said the situation was worse in the Limpopo Trans-frontier in Gaza, where many rhinos and elephants were killed between 2011 and 2012.
Poachers both from Mozambique and South Africa are responsible for the killings. In the northernmost province of Niassa, Malawians, Tanzanians and poachers from the Great Lakes are accused of being involved in the crime.
The poachers are well armed with AK-47 assault rifles and locally-made guns. Some used brutal forms like land mines to kill rhinos and elephants, reports said.

[iNdlovu]

And those were rhino that ventured across the border from Kruger. And our minister of the environment wants to investigate the rhino poaching issue in Kruger before putting up the fence. Edna, in my opinion you are incompetent and don't deserve to hold the title of minister of anything

[PennyinSA]

Apparently 450 unaccounted for according to the PMG! Un bloody believeable!

[iNdlovu]

This is the reality of it all, no matter how much is spent on anti poaching, the numbers still increase. If we do not have a plan B in SA, our rhino will disappear for ever, and it won't be that long.

Our plan B has to be to take care of the babies and orphans, they are the future.

[Sprocky]

2013-04-26 22:39

Cape Town - Poachers, aided by game rangers, have killed every single rhino in the Mozambique section of one of Southern Africa’s most vaunted transfrontier parks.

The director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare's wildlife crime and consumer awareness programme, Kelvin Alie,said poachers had killed 15 rhino in Mozambique's Limpopo National Park last month, the last remaining animals from an estimated population of more than 300 when the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park was proclaimed in 2002.

The administrator of the Limpopo National Park told media that 30 rangers will appear in court soon, charged with involvement in the killing of the rhino.

“It is tragic beyond tears that we learn game rangers have now become the enemy in the fight to protect rhino from being poached for their horns.

“That the entire rhino population of part of such an important conservation initiative can be wiped out – and with the help of wildlife enforcement officers - speaks volumes about the deadly intent of the wildlife trade.

They will stop at nothing to get to their quarry,” said Alie.

Limpopo National Park is part of the Great Limpopo National Park, which straddles South Africa (Kruger National Park), Mozambique (Limpopo National Park) and Gonarezhou (Zimbabwe) a conservation area of about 35 000km².

Treatment

The department of environmental affairs said on Friday that the Kruger National Park continued to be the reserve most severely hit by rhino poaching in South Africa.
Since January 2013, 180 rhino have been poached in Kruger, out of a national total of 249.

A total of 668 rhino were poached in South Africa last year.

Rhino horn is most in demand in Vietnam and Indonesia where it is incorrectly used as an aid in the treatment of certain illnesses.

Mozambique is also being flagged amid concerns that poaching of elephants for their ivory is also on the increase.

Elephant ivory is in high demand in China where it is seen as "white gold" and an important vehicle for investment.

The IFAW will later this year partner with Interpol in providing training for customs and wildlife law enforcement officers in Mozambique.

This forms part of a worldwide capacity building initiative.

IFAW has since 2006 trained more than 1 600 government representatives at the forefront of the struggle against wildlife crime in several countries throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean.

The IFAW director for Southern Africa, Jason Bell, said: "“Cross border co-operation and intelligence-led enforcement are the only way we can halt poaching and trafficking.

"It is too big a problem for any one country to tackle.

"We need range states, transit countries and destination countries to share their law enforcement resources, including intelligence, or we’ll never be in a position to shut down the kingpins of the international ivory trade.

"Poaching and the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn is an issue of global significance and needs a global response if we are to turn the tables on the killers.

"This cannot happen in a vacuum.

"Consumer nations – China, Vietnam and Indonesia – have to make a concerted effort to reduce the demand for these products in their own backyards because otherwise the battle will be lost."

[Richprins]

[Errol1]

I was having a look at New24 a few minutes ago and read that the last Rhino has been slaughtered by poachers in a game park in Mozambique. This is so sad...

http://www.news24.com/Green/News/Poache ... e-20130426

[pooky]

The stock answer always is to 'have an investigation' - by the time
that is done it will be 'too late she cried'

What a sad state of affairs when those appointed to protect our wild life
are the very ones aiding in the demise of the poor rhino. Put the damn fence
back up - I know there are helicopters etc but it will make it a lot more difficult
for those that still operate on foot.

[Amoli]

This is very sad - and in their life time they will live to regret.

A fence has never kept anybody out or in for that matter. If you look along the border with Zim where there are double fences up with blade fencing rolls in between - it just doesn't stop them cutting holes through and entering.

What a fence will do, it can keep our animals in our country - so they have to come over the border to poach. Should they get caught, they can be judged by SA law.

[Toko]

Worsening Rhino war Strains Countries’ Relations




Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on April 30, 2013

The growing incursion of rhino poachers from Mozambique into South Africa’s flagship Kruger National Park is beginning to strain relations between the two countries. South African security operatives trying to stem the relentless killing of the enigmatic animals speak of it as a “border war”. They are getting increasingly fed-up with Mozambique’s security agencies for not doing more to clamp down on the poachers and the rhino-horn smugglers on their side of the boundary.

Major General Johan Jooste, a veteran soldier from southern Africa’s bush-war era who was appointed late last year to head up the military, police and game-ranger units fighting the poachers in the park, reverts to the military terms of “insurgency” and “counter-insurgency” to describe the situation. He says the rhino poaching is one of the worst crises in the more than a century of the park’s existence. 
South African National Parks (SANParks) chief executive David Mabunda has called it a “war situation”, with the boundary between Kruger and Mozambique proving to be “the weakest line of defence against incursions”.

With between 8,000 and 10,000 white rhinos and about a thousand black rhinos, Kruger National Park is home to the majority of South Africa’s estimated 18,000 white and 2,000 black rhino populations. At the rate that the animals are getting killed it is feared that both types, but in particular the more critically endangered black species, could be headed for extinction in a few decades’ time.
 Already 180 rhinos have been killed in the park since the beginning of the year, against a national total of 249. It is now feared the figure for 2013 could end up even exceeding last year’s horrendous toll of 668, of which Kruger Park accounted for 425.

Poachers Killed in Fire Fights with Rangers

According to SANParks, 30 of the 36 suspected poachers apprehended in Kruger Park so far this year turned out to be Mozambicans. Eleven of the 36 were killed in fire-fights with the security forces and the rest were arrested.

The rising casualty rate bears out the extent to which it is starting to resemble a war situation. Jooste insists the basic purpose remains to arrest suspects, in line with the normal rules of law enforcement. But the poachers generally seem to have military training. They come heavily armed and are quite willing to engage in fire-fights. Unlike the park’s security personnel, they are not bound by any rules of engagement. And that, Jooste says, makes it an unequal and dangerous situation for the rangers.

Further stacking the odds against the anti-poaching units is the vastness of the 20,000-square-kilometer (7,700-square-mile) park and the general lushness of the terrain. There are only 339 rangers doing regular foot patrols. It becomes a matter almost of luck to catch the poachers, who slip back and forth across the border and are able to use the cover of the dense bush as they search for their quarry.

As part of its campaign to alert the public to the growing crisis, SANParks has been taking media parties on excursions in Kruger Park to show them what the terrain looks like in which most of the rhino poaching happens. They also showed how patrols were being carried out by the rangers, all of whom have been combat-trained, much like regular soldiers. 
It was demonstrated how rangers armed with assault rifles and carrying basic survival kits spend up to 14 days at a time on patrol. At night they sleep in the open or in small camouflaged tents.

When poachers are spotted, or a shot is heard, or a spoor or a rhino carcass is found, their reports are assessed back at headquarters in Skukuza , Kruger Park’s main camp, where geometric wall charts in what resembles a war room map out the different terrains and the poaching hotspots. Back-up units, including dog handlers, get rushed to the scene, some by helicopter, to go after the poachers.

The media groups also saw some sites of rhino killings and how forensic evidence was gathered, including DNA samples of the dead animal for the rhino DNA bank being developed at the University of Pretoria’s veterinary school outside the country’s capital of Pretoria.

Seasoned journalists flinched at the brutality of the scenes. The marks on the ground around the carcasses showed that the downed animals must still have been alive and struggling when their horns were hacked out of their heads. The poachers are said to be reluctant to waste bullets on wounded animals. They want it all done as quickly and quietly as possible.

The conflict has become a threat as well to the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) which President Nelson Mandela and Mozambique’s President Joaquim Chissano initiated in the late 1990s and which was signed into existence in 2002. Part of the agreement was to systematically drop the high-security boundary fence separating Kruger Park from Mozambique’s adjoining Limpopo National Park. 
Much of the 375-km boundary fence is still up, but some sections have been taken down and other parts have been allowed to fall into disrepair, all for purposes of allowing the animals to cross back and forth between the parks.

The fence dates back to the anti-colonial and civil wars that raged throughout the region during the latter part of the previous century. The idea behind doing away with it was to create a sprawling wildlife kingdom that would vastly extend the animals’ roaming areas and become a far bigger tourist destiny than Kruger was already offering on its own, with economic benefits in particular for Mozambique and the impoverished communities on its side of the border.

Jooste mentioned that part of the solution to the poaching problem might be to put back the high-security fence to make it less easy for poachers to slip across the boundary and to help prevent Kruger Park’s animals from straying into Mozambique where, it is said, rhinos in particular are dead the moment they do so.

Conscious of the serious implications for the ambitious transboundary conservation scheme, Jooste picked his words carefully. Putting back the fence, he said, was not part of SANParks policy right now. But it might become part of the solution. It would have to be decided what kind of fence it should be and how it would affect the GLTP. It might be put back only in critical areas (where most incursions are happening).

Fencing the Border Counter-Productive

But the Peace Parks Foundation, which South African industrialist and philanthropist Anton Rupert set up in the 1990s, with Mandela and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands as its patrons, to promote transfrontier-park schemes, has warned that putting back the fence would not only destroy the project but indeed be totally counter-productive. 
Its chief executive, Werner Myburgh, has said that communities living in Mozambique’s adjoining Limpopo National Park have just recently agreed, after years of tough negotiations, to be resettled outside the park for purposes of consolidating the transfrontier arrangement.

The relocation is being done with millions in funding from the German and French governments.
 This funding could dry up if a return of the boundary fence is seen as a failure of the project. This would cause the villagers to stay put and perhaps lead to more people moving into the park, thus creating bigger settlements that would offer an even better springboard for the poachers to make their sorties into Kruger.
 Myburgh explained: “We cannot resort to anti-poaching operations alone. We need to take a more innovative approach. There needs to be a whole suite of actions. A successful transfrontier park where matters like security are co-managed could be a major deterrent also to poaching. We are three to five years away from realising a fantastic dream. Let us not destroy it.”

The situation is a far cry from the relationship of trust that existed between the two countries up till a few years ago when Kruger Park donated more than 3,000 head of game to restock the war-decimated Mozambican park.
 South African officials say arrangements are, however, underway for a high-level meeting between the two governments to try to resolve the situation, which has become so serious that there are even hopes of bringing together the two presidents to see if they can resolve the matter.
 At the recent meeting in Bangkok of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), Mozambique came under strong pressure to account for its failure to contain the poachers and rhino-horn smugglers on its side of the boundary. It was given a year to come up with appropriate action or face trade sanctions.

Under Mozambique’s conservation laws, poaching is still only a misdemeanour, allowing poachers and smugglers to get away with no more than light fines. The South African media has in recent days been reporting how poachers and their smuggling-syndicate handlers brazenly plan and carry out their sorties from along the Mozambican border area. There have even been accusations of security-force collusion with the syndicates.