{"id":8441,"date":"2012-02-29T14:43:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T12:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/02\/four-s-africa-game-park-staff-arrested-over-rhino-poaching\/"},"modified":"2012-02-29T14:43:23","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T12:43:23","slug":"four-s-africa-game-park-staff-arrested-over-rhino-poaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/four-s-africa-game-park-staff-arrested-over-rhino-poaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Four S.Africa game park staff arrested over rhino poaching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG<\/span> Feb 29 (Reuters) &#8211; Four staff members at<br \/>\nSouth Africa&#8217;s flagship Kruger National Park have been arrested<br \/>\non suspicion of killing rhinos and selling their horns to<br \/>\ncriminal syndicates, the park service said on Wednesday.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Home to more than 90 percent of the continent&#8217;s rhinos,<br \/>\nSouth Africa is on the front line of a worsening war with<br \/>\npoachers who send the horns to China and Southeast Asia for use<br \/>\nin traditional medicine.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;the unscrupulous and revolting hands of the poaching<br \/>\nsyndicates have stretched as far as to taint the hands of those<br \/>\ntrusted with the great responsibility of being guardians of our<br \/>\nnatural heritage,&#8221; parks chief David Mabunda said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Poachers killed a record 448 rhinoceroses in South Africa<br \/>\nlast year and have alredy killed 80 this year. The government<br \/>\nhas sent troops to the 19,500 square km (7,500 square mile)<br \/>\nKruger Park &#8211; about the size of Israel &#8211; which is home to<br \/>\nthousands of the animals, in a bid to reduce the slaughter.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A decade ago South Africa had more than 20,000 rhinos and<br \/>\nwas losing about 15 a year to poachers.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But poaching has increased dramatically in the last few<br \/>\nyears as the spread of wealth in places like Vietnam and<br \/>\nThailand has enabled more people to buy powdered rhino horn, a<br \/>\nprized ingredient in traditional medicine, though it has no<br \/>\nproved benefits.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The street value of rhino horn is higher than that of gold<br \/>\nin many parts of Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Tim Pearce)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG Feb 29 (Reuters) &#8211; Four staff members at South Africa&#8217;s flagship Kruger National Park have been arrested on suspicion of killing rhinos and selling their horns to criminal syndicates, the park service said on Wednesday. Home to more than 90 percent of the continent&#8217;s rhinos, South Africa is on the front line of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-8441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}