INLSA
190312: A rhino horn lies on the road at Durbans Battery Beach while three of the four men arrested in connection with its discovery sit bound on the pavement. Picture: Richard Slatter
The rhino killing toll in SA has shot up dramatically to at least 150 deaths over the past three months – almost double the figure since the last government statistics were released just over a month ago.
This means that rhinos are being killed at the rate of almost two every day and if the shooting spree remains at this level, at least 600 of these endangered animals will be dead by year-end.
To put this figure in perspective, the nationwide rhino poaching toll has rarely exceeded 20 deaths a year over the past several decades.
But the killings have begun to surge since 2008 when 83 rhinos were slaughtered illegally for their horns. By the end of last year the annual death rate rose to a new record level of 448.
Environment Minister Edna Molewa cancelled a press conference on the rhino poaching crisis in Midrand yesterday, but issued a statement later in the afternoon expressing “shock” over the latest statistics.
Molewa also appeared to back-track on recent pledges to beef up rhino security in the Kruger National Park by repairing the boundary fence which separates the park from Mozambique.
In her statement yesterday, Molewa said a survey by the Defence and Public Works departments had concluded that “the fence will be too expensive and difficult to maintain”. She did not put a figure on the estimated repair and maintenance costs.
Instead, the government was now looking at the feasibility of creating a new security “buffer zone” along the Mozambique/Kruger borderline.
Molewa said she had also recently met her Mozambique counterpart Fernando Sumbana, who had indicated that the country intended to introduce stricter laws on poaching.
Mozambique was also in the process of forming a new “elite anti-poaching unit” and a government decree has been passed to create a new state conservation agency similar to SA National Parks.
Pseudo-hunts
The SA government was also “engaging” with the Vietnamese government in an attempt to limit the number of pseudo-hunts, in which Vietnamese nationals were issued permits to hunt rhinos legally in SA and then exported their horns on the pretext that they were sports trophies.
To reduce abuse of the permit system, Vietnamese officials would be asked to verify the names, addresses and passports of Vietnamese nationals applying for permits.
Prospective hunters would also be “advised… to ensure that the applicant understands the trophy must be retained for personal use (no commercial trade allowed)”.
She did not explain what would happen if Vietnamese “hunters” were later found to have sold their trophy horns to criminal syndicates to be crushed into powder for traditional medicine potions.
Molewa said government officials had also visited mainland China to discuss a new draft protocol on rhino management.
Domestically, the government had completed a new inventory on the number of rhino horns stockpiled by provincial conservation agencies.
“Due to security risks the department cannot publicly announce the amount of stock being held by these agencies,” she said.
