Rhino Poaching 2017-2024

[Lisbeth]

These statistics are due to be released on World Rhino Day (September 2023).

Were they? I have not seen them anywhere

[Richprins]

The only reason poaching is on the wane is that rhino protected by the state are all but finished.

[Lisbeth]

KRUGER’S RHINOS
How effective are Greater Kruger’s interventions in keeping rhinos safe? A new report analyses Kruger’s rhino conservation

The science behind keeping the rhinos of Greater Kruger safe

[Richprins]

Interesting, but no mention is made of systemic corruption within Kruger staff.

[Lisbeth]

Most likely because they are talking about the "Greater" Kruger

[Lisbeth]

Kruger’s rhinos continue to face unrelenting threats and catastrophic population declines


A young white rhino in the Waterberg district, north-west of Johannesburg. (Photo: EPA / Jon Hrusa)

By Stephanie Klarmann | 15 Oct 2023

Rhinos are not the only wildlife threatened by poaching: elephant poaching in the Kruger National Park has seen a dramatic increase in the past year, with 32 elephants killed, compared to nine in 2021/2022 – a 225.56% rise.
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There are an estimated 2,060 rhinos left in the Kruger National Park after a decline in numbers of 16.2% during 2022 – despite a substantial drop in poaching.

This was revealed in SANParks’ recently released 2022/2023 Annual Report. At first glance, it appears from the reported 49.74% decrease in rhino poaching that the fight against poaching is being won. But, taken in context, Kruger’s rhinos continue to face unrelenting threats and catastrophic population declines.

After a long period of silence and an unanswered parliamentary question regarding Kruger’s rhino population, the latest annual report indicates that, at the end of 2022, there were 2,060 rhinos (a median of 1,851 white rhinos and 210 black rhinos) remaining in the Kruger compared to 2,458 black and white rhino at the end of 2021. This is a decline of 398 animals, or 16.2% of the population.

There is a worrying lack of a sense of urgency in the report despite these extremely concerning numbers.



‘Lost’ rhino numbers

During 2022, 124 rhinos were lost to poaching – an average of one rhino every three days – compared with 195 in the preceding year. Yet, according to SANParks, “there has been a decline in rhinos of 19.58% in core conservation areas within the national park, most likely due to rhinos moving out in response to continued poaching pressure”.

SANPark’s annual report appears somewhat optimistic that a 4% population growth target has been met in smaller national parks outside the Kruger. Additionally, the report frequently highlights that poaching rates have decreased by 49.74% in Kruger, but comparing poaching numbers to the decline in rhino populations in Kruger National Park paints a distressing picture.



From 2011, a marked decline in the rhino population can be seen, but what stands out here is an unexplained discrepancy between poached rhinos and the overall population decline. From 2015 onwards, in particular, the decline far exceeds the poached rhinos, but surely this can’t be attributed to natural deaths alone? Kruger officials have not offered explanations for this discrepancy, but rather focus on the decline in poaching numbers only.

It is clear in the graph above that an evident decrease in poaching numbers to 2015 is far from sufficient cause to applaud meeting targets. Smaller losses to poaching are also heavily influenced by the fact that so few animals remain — and that gap is closing.

To put this in perspective, there were an estimated 7,000 white rhinos and 440 black rhinos in 2007.

Despite a reported 70% of Kruger’s rhino population being dehorned during the 2022/2023 reporting period, the continued decline remains staggering.

With the majority of the anti-poaching deployments in the southern regions of the park, the 2022/2023 report notes that five white rhino orphans were recovered in addition to 17 injured white rhinos and two black rhinos being treated after surviving poaching attempts.

The poaching rate (a percentage of the average estimated rhino population) in Kruger alone remains fairly steady at 7.1% for white rhino and 3.4% for black rhino as of the end of 2022. This has only slightly been reduced from a combined high of 9.8% for both white and black rhino in 2014.

Range expansion or a lost fight?

In May 2023, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy responded to a parliamentary question regarding the designation of rhino sanctuaries, stating that no rhinos to date had been moved out of the Kruger National Park. The annual report, however, states that disease-free rhinos have been moved to unspecified locations in collaboration with the Wilderness Foundation.

Are these translocations occurring as a final resort to protect the few animals that do remain and an admission that rhinos cannot be adequately protected in Kruger? Or is this softened as “range expansion” as written in the report?

With confirmation now in the annual report that rhino translocations have started, two concerns are not clarified: what factors affect the “limited potential” of such translocations and, given the constant extreme threat facing rhinos, how will they be secured elsewhere, especially in light of the contradiction that smaller and more vulnerable populations are being targeted? Has the Kruger National Park lost the fight against poaching syndicates?

Corruption and vacant posts

Crime analyst Julian Rademeyer’s recent report, Landscape of Fear, draws urgent attention to Kruger’s greatest threat – internal corruption and a network of criminal activities in Mpumalanga. According to the report, the onslaught of poaching is deeply entwined in internal corruption, a burgeoning crisis given the proliferation of organised crime and entrenched poaching syndicates in communities and areas surrounding the park.

The increased violence has been met with an increasingly militarised response from anti-poaching units. And like all proclaimed “wars”, the toll on human life in the name of fighting the “war on poaching” continues to climb to new heights too.

In an effort to curb internal corruption, SANParks attempted to introduce integrity testing. The new approach, involving lie detector tests to tackle corruption, was met with controversy and resistance, and the method was not without its disadvantages which would have called its validity into question.

To address these concerns, the annual report outlines a Ranger Services Integrity Management Plan (RS-IMP) for the Kruger, which was approved on 23 November 2022. This new policy appears to take a more holistic approach, including lifestyle audits and background checks, with a focus on fostering core values and resilience within Kruger’s staff. The annual report makes no mention of the number of staff who have committed to engaging in the integrity management plan. New recruits who would be engaging with this new policy are severely limited as finances are so constrained that at least 52 new posts within the Kruger remain unfilled.

Relationships and working conditions within the park are currently so tense, according to Head Ranger Kathy Dreyer – quoted in Rademeyer’s report – that “we are certainly not going to recruit 52 people and put them into what is not a nice work environment at the moment. It’s not right for them and it is not right for us. If you bring anyone in now, you’re just going to break him or her.”

For now, Dreyer says, the new integrity management policy needs to be implemented before these vacancies can be addressed.

Rademeyer’s report prompted SANParks Board Chairperson Pam Yako to commit to responding, but this has not yet happened and is not as yet on the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee’s calendar.

SANParks’ annual report, likewise, does not refer to information in the Landscape of Fear report and only has passing mention of the fight against internal corruption, alongside the corporate communication department’s acknowledgement that internal corruption among Kruger staff remains a source of negative media attention.

While this move towards a holistic integrity management policy is a step in the right direction, do Kruger’s rhinos have time to wait on the development of standard operating procedures and implementation amid escalating violence and corruption? Can the anti-poaching units currently working tirelessly on the ground wait for improved working conditions as they face increased violence to protect Kruger’s rhinos?

The situation is nothing short of a crisis – but where is the sense of an emergency?

Rhinos remain threatened

Targets and reported decreases in poaching numbers aside, rhinos continue to face critical threats in the Kruger National Park. Unfortunately, it would appear the government is only now starting to admit how dire the situation really is – in Creecy’s statement that “it has become evident that … a species recovery plan for white rhino” is needed.

Rhinos are not the only wildlife threatened by poaching: elephant poaching has seen a dramatic increase in the last reporting year alone, with 32 elephants poached compared with nine in 2021/2022 – a 225.56% increase.

World Rhino Day on 22 September was met with mixed feelings of trepidation and small, cautious glimmers of hope: despite poaching pressure, the International Rhino Foundation’s State of the Rhino 2023 report indicates that the black rhino population is slowly increasing. The white rhino population, however, continues to experience declines.

One of South Africa’s hardest-hit regions is KwaZulu-Natal. With increased security measures across the Kruger National Park, it would appear poaching syndicates are targeting smaller and more vulnerable populations. This calls into question the policy of moving rhino out of Kruger.

SANParks’ annual report feels underwhelming. There is simply no debate about Kruger’s rhinos. The truth is that each remaining rhino is now critical to saving the species from extinction.

The SANParks communications team has not yet responded to our questions and requests for clarification. DM

Dr Stephanie Klarmann is a conservation psychology researcher based in South Africa. Her work has focused primarily on envisioning a conservation psychology relevant to the South African context with a stronger focus on issues of justice, coexistence and capacity building.

[Richprins]

There were never 7000 rhino to begin with, and I think there are less than 1000 left in Kruger, they still do not do comprehensive aerial surveys so nobody knows.

Losses have snowballed as mating is affected now, I think. It takes years for dead territorial bulls to be replaced so that mating can resume, methinks.

[Lisbeth]

Turning the tide? ‘We’ve lost just one rhino in 350 days’ — Sabi Sand


Working alongside veterinary teams, pilots and provincial authorities, Sabi Sand Nature Reserve embarked on a rhino dehorning operation in May 2022 to protect the animals against poachers. (Photo: Sabi Sand Nature Reserve )

By Tiara Walters | 20 Dec 2023

South Africa’s most exclusive enclave of private nature reserves reveals their hidden security nerve centre — and shows what they’ve done to thwart horn poachers for nearly a record year.
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Sabi Sand Nature Reserve – Marking 75 years in 2023 as the country’s original luxury safari brand, Sabi Sand’s 34 commercial lodges include some of the most recognisable names in the industry, such as Singita, where anyone can pull in for at least R40,000 a night. There is also Londolozi, co-owned by CEO Dave Varty and his brother — the colourful conservationist and filmmaker John Varty.

Ulusaba, British billionaire Richard Branson’s plush concession, forms part of this storied stretch of Lowveld, spanning 55,000 hectares on the western edge of Kruger National Park.

Yet, not even an enclave criticised by some as a Big Five fortress for wealthy tourists was able to invoke the Midas touch to protect all their rhinos against the past decade’s poaching carnage.

This has left the so-called buffer bandits of the private sector to surrender to last-resort measures — now accepted as inevitable, effective and even normalised, for the time being. That is, dehorning all their rhinos and introducing other security interventions that seem to be paying off, reserve manager Iain Olivier has told Daily Maverick inside their security headquarters.

“In August 2023, we lost our first rhino to poaching in 350 days,” says Olivier, also serving as reserve warden since 2019.

“We’re sometimes called the ‘buffer bandits’: you know, the cowboys of the buffer areas of the western sector of the greater Kruger,” quips Olivier, who did his master’s in Kenya on the links between conflict and conservation among Maasai herders. “These sort of fringe private sector guys who tend to do what they want … throw money at security and sort things out. But I’m quite comfortable with that. We get things done.”

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Watch: Reserve manager and warden Iain Olivier demonstrates the ‘secret sauce’ behind the reserve’s state-of-the-art fence, spanning 74km along the western border. (Video: Tiara Walters)

‘I don’t celebrate dehorning, but it’s effective’
For security reasons, the reserve’s rhino numbers remain under wraps, but Olivier singles out an upgraded fence system, detection and surveillance technology, drones and staff polygraph tests as crime-busting techniques that have helped keep this critical local population viable.

To combat the surge in poaching incidents, the reserve initiated a dehorning programme in May 2022.

This move aimed to reduce the attraction of rhino horns by removing them.

“I don’t celebrate dehorning,” Olivier cautions, “but it’s been an effective interim tool.” The data demonstrate a significant drop in security incidents following the dehorning initiative, underscoring its effectiveness.

In 2021, the protected area, including neighbouring Mala Mala and Sabie game reserves, lost a total of 25 rhinos. In 2022, poachers claimed the lives of four animals. Since dehorning last year, poaching in the protected area has dropped by 96% to just one individual this year — a dehorned animal.

In the 350-day period leading up to August, this brought Sabi Sand to within a hair’s breadth of a year without losing a single precious rhino, a remarkable milestone given that illegal horn demand has claimed about 10,000 rhinos in the greater Kruger area since about 2007.


Reserve manager and warden Iain Olivier at one of the reserve’s shock boxes, an installation powered by solar, battery and inverter energy. A single box runs roughly 5 kilometres of fence. The shock box also funnels alarms back to the reserve’s main security control room. (Photo: Tiara Walters)

Olivier and his colleagues acknowledge that challenges remain, even with dehorned individuals. Poachers have adapted to the changing circumstances, at times targeting dehorned animals for the remaining horn fragments.

“I think we were quite lucky in that our local syndicates only wanted the full horns,” says Kim Lester, the reserve’s internal investigator and control room manager. “On the other hand, because there are so few rhinos left with horns, some poachers have changed their strategies. Poachers from Mozambique now seem to be targeting dehorned animals — but to a lesser extent.”

Successful arrests of two prolific poachers have also led to a drop in incidents.

“In the period before dehorning, we had 40 security-related incidents. After we arrested a very well-known poacher, they dropped,” Lester observes. “We arrested another well-known poacher shortly afterwards. He was actually on our radar for years, and we didn’t know his real name until we arrested him, which caused a further drop in incidents.”

Truth be told: polygraph tests
The reserve, including lodges, employs about 2,000 people — with 70% from neighbouring communities in the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality.

To investigate criminal activity that threatens a species ark of about 500 birds, 150 mammals and a savanna biome that is as intact as it gets these days, Lester’s unit conducts annual polygraph tests with 100% of field staff and 25% of lodge-based staff who do not work in the field.

Any staff member with access to a vehicle and the reserve undergoes the test.

If a rhino is lost in a specific area, policy requires staff members working in that vicinity to get tested. Those who fail, undergo further investigation and a second test.

This approach has allowed the reserve to identify potential internal involvement, but Lester stresses the importance of creating a safe and open environment for interviews. The goal is to obtain information and cooperation, not intimidation.

“We want all reserve users to feel safe with us so that they can talk to us, even though it doesn’t happen often that they do,” she notes, hinting at the complexities of the process. However, her team has successfully identified internal staff members involved in poaching activities — and thus their access to the protected area was revoked.

“We’ve found that it’s been working for us amazingly, and we’ve cleared out some really bad people,” she says.

This year alone, the reserve has taken significant action, firing 11 staff members, seven of whom were linked to poaching activities. Four were fired for theft, because “a theft incident could develop to more serious offences, such as poaching”, she notes.

“There are the outside syndicates, and the syndicate leaders and then there are the different levels of poachers. We basically have the same inside as well,” she explains. The issue extends to former employees recruiting individuals who may still work for the reserve, creating a vulnerable system that requires constant vigilance.

The reserve’s approach includes random searches at the access gates as well as of staff and lodge accommodations, along with risk assessments for lodges to identify areas where security can be enhanced.

But how does one tell the difference between a nervous criminal and someone who has a default disposition for nervousness?

“The testers will ask control questions, such as, are you sitting on a chair? That’s how they form a baseline of stress levels and reactions to different questions that are calibrated to each individual,” Lester says.

“The polygraphers monitors will test blood pressure, heart rate, perspiration, breathing and movement. So generally, a person will react — if not in one of them, all of them,” Lester explains.

‘People poach because of debt’
An enduring aspect of local poaching is its connection to the sea of human poverty swelling in the Bushbuckridge area abutting the reserve.

The Sabi Sand Pfunanani Trust funds 14 community projects to support some of the poorest people barely surviving outside the fence. Yet, this cannot cater for the lion’s share of two or three million people living here, who — 30 years into democracy — still await basic services like running water from a state corroded by corruption, inaction and lawlessness.

There also appears to be a link between loan sharks, the destabilising effects of the Covid-19 lockdown and the rhino bloodshed that has rocked reserves.

“Most people who get involved with poaching do so because of debt, loan sharks and all the same syndicate leaders,” Lester reveals. “That’s how they hook them.”


Dehorning a rhino as part of Sabi Sand Nature Reserve’s anti-poaching interventions. (Photo: Sabi Sand Nature Reserve)

In response to these economic hardships, in 2023 the reserve launched a financial literacy course for staff, in partnership with the Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation.

These courses aim to empower employees with the knowledge and tools to manage their income better, reducing their vulnerability to predatory loan sharks and criminal involvement.

“Covid hit the country hard, and it left people desperate. We saw an increase in snaring and meat poaching in the areas around the reserve because people weren’t earning money; they had to eat,” Lester recalls.

“I always say I would love to have my own lockdown now that Covid’s done,” she smiles. During the height of the pandemic, daily shot reports, each requiring follow-ups, were the norm. “We never stopped here. We just kept going.”

Inside the heart of the security hub
Nestled inside the reserve’s headquarters is its security hub, where an unsung team of eagle-eyed individuals work shifts around the clock, scrutinising the vital areas.

In this control room, cameras are monitored using several pairs of human eyes, staring pointer-like at the screens ahead of them.

“Our human controllers are so well trained and experienced, they can detect that human presence immediately,” Olivier says. “They have seen people at more than 1km from the AI-enabled thermal cameras — it’ll be so far away and pixelated that even the AI can’t pick up on it.”

Lester adds that all their anti-poaching successes “have not come directly from our AI-enabled cameras. Every contact, every arrest has come directly from the result of our controllers spotting them.”


Monitored by human controllers 24 hours a day, the security hub’s control room employs an integrated system of multiple technologies to detect and respond to incursions. This photo was edited for security reasons. (Photo: Tiara Walters)

Designed by Wildlife Protection Solutions, mobile trail cameras are deployed inside the bush at different locations. When an intruder slips off a static screen, Olivier says “there are also many, well-placed thermal and AI-enabled pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras to pursue them”.

Pointing to a PTZ screen overlooking the south-facing Paul Kruger gate, Lester recalls: “Last June our controllers saw someone walking along the river and they followed them while we got our anti-poaching teams to react. As it turned out, the person was a pangolin poacher, whom we arrested.”

This control room also employs the Earth Ranger software system as a live data-management tool, tracking various aspects of the reserve — from layers of rivers, dams, lodges and ranger pickets; to live monitoring of all vehicles and cameras. The software system serves as a critical component for Sabi Sand’s security infrastructure, including fence alarm management.

“All the alarms will come into the control room and Earth Ranger,” Lester explains. “The control room informs the fence team, who’ll then go out to see what’s happening on the ground.”

The control room’s communication network spans multiple solar-supported towers across the reserve, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity. All fence shock boxes and towers are backed up by solar and generator power. These communication masts, featuring fibre connections and strong repeaters, allow for real-time monitoring and rapid response by the reserve management teams.


On a 2023 summer safari drive with Savanna Private Game Reserve, representing one of Sabi Sand’s 34 commercial lodges. Thanks to reserve protections, guests can still see dehorned rhinos. The other megafauna A-listers — lions, leopards, elephants and buffaloes — are all often spotted on a single drive. (Photo: Tiara Walters)

Rhino horn: ‘It really does not smell nice’
The controllers, whose identities we cannot reveal for security reasons, work eight-hour shifts to maintain vigilance 24 hours a day.

As though anyone had the ability to stare at pixelated dots hours at a time, and tell if those tiny blobs were, say, impalas or humans, one controller told us: “You just need to concentrate.”

Lester, who is also in charge of control room ops, adds they encourage controllers to get involved in hands-on conservation efforts, such as dehorning rhinos. This connects them more deeply with the cause they protect.

While the loss of wildlife is a deeply personal matter for Lester, she says any mortality motivates her to intensify the reserve’s anti-poaching responses.

“Look, I mean, it’s hard when we do lose a rhino,” she says. “Each of our team, we take it personally, we really do.”

Hovering somewhere at hip-level, listening to the adults speak about defending the natural heritage of future generations, a child pipes up.

“The other day, my school went and dehorned two rhinos,” says the child, who may not be identified.

“We got to touch the rhinos and smell the horns, but they don’t smell very nice,” the child confides. “They really don’t smell very nice.”

When asked what it was like to witness such things first-hand, the youngster says: “It was very fun. My favourite part was seeing the rhino wake up and walk away.” DM

Tiara Walters is a full-time reporter for Daily Maverick’s Our Burning Planet unit. Walters’s stay in Sabi Sand Nature Reserve was made possible by the reserve’s headquarters.

[Richprins]

Brilliant article!

annual polygraph tests with 100% of field staff and 25% of lodge-based staff who do not work in the field.

Any staff member with access to a vehicle and the reserve undergoes the test.

If a rhino is lost in a specific area, policy requires staff members working in that vicinity to get tested. Those who fail, undergo further investigation and a second test.

This is the way to go, absolutely. If it were done in Kruger there would not be such a crisis. Once again Government incompetence has effectively been outsourced to the private sector, as with everything else.

[Lisbeth]

Always the same...... If it were their money at stake, the music would be different .....I think