Horror film of Africa rhino poaching

REUTERS SOUTH AFRICA JUNE 2012

Rhino poaching is highest in SA, according to the WWF. (Green Renaissance)

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Johannesburg - Flies buzz around a hulking pile of flesh and muscle that lies rotting in the Kruger National Park with its eyes gouged out and scimitar-like horns hacked off in the opening scenes of a shocking new documentary on rhino poaching.

A series of still-photos of other gruesome kills flash across the screen in Rhino under threat, a deeply disturbing 28-minute film available on video-sharing website YouTube that has been made to drive home the horror of a rhino poaching crisis which has reached alarming levels.

Made by UNTV and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the film can be seen on YouTube.

It debuted on Monday at the Rio +20 global environment conference in Rio de Janeiro.

South Africa, home to close to the vast majority of the planet’s rhino, is the epicentre of the unfolding tragedy.

According to the latest data from the department of environmental affairs, as of 15 June 245 rhino have been poached in the country so far in 2012. At this rate the carnage will almost certainly exceed the 448 slain last year.

A decade ago only a handful were being taken.

Elephant and rhino poaching is surging, conservationists say, an illegal part of Asia’s scramble for African resources, driven by the growing purchasing power of newly affluent Asians.

Heart-rending

Rhino horn has long been used in traditional medicines in China and Vietnam and the film quotes a doctor at Hanoi’s biggest hospital who sings its praises.

According to the film, rhino horns have also been stolen from museums and private collections in more than 15 countries.

It says Vietnam’s last wild Javan rhino was poached last year and the slaughter in Africa is relentless.

“It’s heart-rending,” Ted Reilly, the head of Big Game Parks in Swaziland, says in the film. The kingdom lost its first rhino to poachers in two decades last year.

“You will find a rhino cow with a baby calf. The mother goes down and that calf usually will defend the mother. It won’t allow the poachers to get anywhere near it. And they end up having to shoot it too,” Reilly says.

The horn and half the face is then cut off with a chainsaw and Reilly says they have had instances where rhinos who had been drugged then wake up and stagger around in this state.

“How do you deal with people like that?,” he asks.

For the game wardens on the front lines, feelings toward them can certainly harden.

“I suppose the brutality of it is being lost on me at the moment. And to survive the emotional side of it one gets hardened. It’s like seeing dead poachers now. I’ve seen enough this year not to worry about them anymore,” says one Kruger Park ranger.

Rhinos are being hunting to the brink of extinction — and could disappear forever unless we act now. Shocking new numbers reveal that 440 rhinos were brutally killed last year in South Africa alone, a massive increase on five years ago when just 13 had their horns hacked off.

Fuelling this devastation is a boom in demand for rhino horns, used for bogus cancer cures, hangover remedies and good luck charms by Chinese and Vietnamese elites. Protests from African countries are being ignored by the authorities in these two countries, but the European Union could change in the coming days. The EU have the power to push the world’s animal protection organisation CITES to ban all rhino trade into China and Vietnam until they they have taken action to punish the poachers and drive down the demand to 2007 levels.

The situation is so dire that the threat has even spread into British zoos who are now on red-alert for rhino killing gangs now hunting the places built to protect them! Let’s raise a giant roar for the rhinos and urge Britain, France and Denmark to take the lead and push for new protections to stop the rhino’s extinction. Sign the petition below and forward this widely — we will deliver it to the EU meeting in Brussels and ensure that new powers are enacted to protect the rhino later this year.

Johannesburg - SANParks shot dead a suspected rhino poacher and wounded two others at the Kruger National Park on Tuesday, the Hawks said.

“Park rangers noticed four men crossing a river at the Kruger Park and ordered them to stop. The men allegedly shot at the rangers who then returned fire,” Colonel McIntosh Polela said in a statement.

One of the poachers died on the scene and two were taken to hospital.

The fourth man was arrested and it was hoped he would lead authorities to another person involved in poaching.

A rifle and several knives, apparently for hacking off rhino horns, were confiscated.

“The arrested man has already admitted to the killing of three rhinos that were killed in the park last week,” Polela said.

He was expected to appear in court soon.

Johannesburg - The carcasses of three white rhino believed to have been shot by poachers have been found in Limpopo, the Hawks said on Wednesday.

The carcasses were found on Monday and Tuesday.

A patrolling ranger spotted vultures in the sky and on searching the area found the carcass of a white rhino bull at Letaba Ranch, between Tzaneen and Phalaborwa, spokesperson McIntosh Polela said.

“The rhino is believed to have been killed about a week ago. Its horn has been removed.”

Polela said investigations revealed a gunshot wound behind the right ear but said no empty cartridges were found at the scene.

The carcasses of two pregnant white rhino cows were discovered by rangers on routine patrol at Hannah Lodge in Ohrigstad, Polela said.

“The rhino have several gunshot wounds, but their horns have not been removed. Our suspicion is that the poachers were probably disturbed and ran away without taking the horns.”

He said investigations were being conducted to determine the exact circumstances around the killing of all three rhino and to catch the people involved.

More than 80 rhino have been killed so far this year.

We are pleased to announce that a baby rhino was born today on Amakhala. The discovery of this new birth was hugely emotional in that this calf carries the genes of our bull Chippy that was poached in November 2010 - this calf is his only living progeny. The other part to this feel good story is that this new calf was born to Nomtsha the mother of our other bull Isipho who was also poached at the same time as Chippy.

HillsNek Safaris is committed to the conservation of the Southern White Rhino Ceratotherium simum.
The historical range of the southern white rhino is from southern Angola through Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland into the northern, northwestern and subtropical eastern areas of South Africa.

By 1900, the only remaining population comprised 10-20 animals in the Umfolozi region in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is from this relic population that the more than 20,000 southern white rhinos present in Africa today were derived. South Africa has therefore clearly played an absolutely critical role in the survival and recovery of the southern white rhino.

This has been achieved through a number of innovations, ranging from the darting and translocation of white rhino to create new populations (which started in 1961), sale to the private sector, the introduction of trophy hunting in 1968 and the auctioning of rhino which began in 1989.

The white rhino story represents one of the most successful conservation efforts of all time and HillsNek Safaris, through intense daily monitoring and Amakhala Game Reserve providing the optimum habitat, strives to protect and promote the population growth of the southern white rhino in Africa.

Sadly in late 2010, Amakhala Game Reserve fell victim to the vicious war of rhino poaching and lost 2 prominent white rhino bulls. Determined to protect and conserve this species more than ever, the Chipembere Rhino Foundation was established as a separate, privately-run non-profit organization, aimed at conserving rhino and supporting the stringent anti-poaching efforts needed.

It has been a bad year for rhinos in South Africa. Many more got killed than in 2010, the 333 toll of which was described with words like “shocking” and “outrageous”. Most thought it couldn’t get worse.

It’s got much worse. The tally for 2011 is at least 433. It could end up being higher, for even as the year drew to a close, reports kept coming in of more dead rhinos found with gruesome wounds or just stumps left where their horns had been.

• Friday, December 2 – two white rhinos found shot in a private park in a mountainous region north of Johannesburg;

• Saturday, December 3 – a black rhino found shot in the far north of South Africa near the border crossing into Zimbabwe;

• Wednesday, December 7 – four white rhinos found killed in private reserves just outside the western boundary of South Africa’s flagship Kruger National Park, with the one victim’s calf so badly injured that it had to be put down;

• Friday, December 9 – the carcasses of five rhinos are found inside Kruger National Park, not far from one of its southern gates;

• Monday, December 12 – a report appears on the front page of newspapers on a gruesome mutilation of a rhino bull and cow in a private reserve in the far south of South Africa. They were darted and had their horns hacked off with a machete. Both could be revived by having antidotes administered, but the cow had to have her unborn calf aborted. The owner told of how he found one of his female staff members crying and hugging the debilitated cow where she lay crumpled under a bush. The use of the specialized drug, called M99, or etorphine, to incapacitate the animals, has once more raised suspicions about the possible involvement of veterinarians or people connected to the service.

• Tuesday, December 13 – a suspected poacher was arrested after he got wounded in a fire-fight in Kruger National Park with park rangers and soldiers. Two other suspects escaped across the border into Mozambique. Four fresh rhino horns were recovered.

The rising toll confirms a trend that is all the more alarming when considering that only 13 rhinos got poached in 2007. The 2011 spike in killings happened despite a multi-pronged strategy devised last year, involving park rangers, the police and the defense force, the prosecuting authorities and even revenue and customs services.

In Kruger National Park, a special unit of soldiers was deployed in the beginning of the year to patrol the park’s 250-mile (400 km) border with Mozambique, which has become the main springboard for poaching sorties across the South African border.

Despite the increased security presence, 244 rhinos were killed in Kruger National Park, which is home to about 10,000 to 12,000 white rhinos and about 500 black rhinos.

Ken Maggs, head of the park’s anti-poaching unit, says 21 poachers were killed in skirmishes with park rangers and the soldiers, and 78 were arrested.

“Unfortunately, the fatalities are a by-product of the value being put on rhino horn. The poachers come into the park armed with hunting rifles and assault weapons. We operate under the legal prescription of arrest, not to shoot to kill, but the poachers come prepared to fight. They switch tactics, such as coming in by night rather than by day. And in the dark, you need to make split-second decisions, or risk leaving your family without a father,” Maggs explained.

He says he is an optimist and is sure the situation will be turned round. But, he adds, it cannot be a single-tool solution. It has to be a whole toolbox, and the bigger the better.

Maggs was appointed head of the National Wildlife Crime Reaction Unit that was set up last year as an umbrella body to co-ordinate efforts between various state bodies and private reserve owners in the fight against the rhino killings.

The poaching and rhino-horn smuggling, he explains, are operated at several levels, and each requires different types of expertise. It is a complex network which, tragically, even extends into wildlife-protection organizations and veterinary circles.

NGS stock photo of white rhino in imFolozi by Volkmar K. Wentzel

At the ground level there are the poachers who mostly come from nearby communities and who have the local knowledge about where their targets are and how best to get to them. It is the field operatives, the rangers and police and soldiers, who have to deal with them.

At the next level are the recruiters, who find the poachers and pay them. This second and also the third level ensure that the booty gets moved as quickly as possible to the smuggling rings, which at the next level see that the horns reach the market countries, mostly China and Vietnam.

While each category presents its own challenges, requiring particular sets of expertise to deal with, there is also a fifth category of intervention needed. This is at the highest political and diplomatic level to ensure that the support structures and legal framework are in place also to deal with the problem both in the neighboring countries from which the assaults are made and the far-away countries in which the rhino horns end up.

“Unfortunately, there are still too many people who think of the target as just a rhino and therefore of such killings as simply another wildlife crime. It should in fact be seen as organized crime and get treated in the same way as gun-running, armed robbery, heists and hijacking. It is not surprising that, considering the odds of getting caught or killed when committing those other crimes, more and more criminals are getting into the rhino-poaching business,” says Maggs.

Already there is close co-operation between South Africa’s parks authorities, the police, the military and the prosecuting authorities. But Maggs believes the situation can only be properly addressed if the co-operation gets extended to Mozambique’s police and military. That, however, requires intervention at government level.

Dr David Mabunda, chief executive of South African National Parks, indicated that the next big step in the unfolding strategy may well be to get such co-operation going between the security forces of the two countries. He suggested South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and the national minister of environmental affairs, Edna Molewa, were due to have talks with the Mozambican government.

“In 95 percent of the cases – no, even more – Mozambicans are involved in the poaching. Many return in body bags. We don’t boast about killing people. Our purpose is to arrest them, also to gather information. They should know the risk by now, but still they keep coming and the gangs keep multiplying.

“The answer should come through joint operations between the South African and Mozambican security forces. Their Limpopo National Park (which forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park with Kruger National Park) is supposed to serve as a buffer. It isn’t, and we need to talk to them about it,” he said.

As for the market-end of the brutal trade, he said South Africa’s Presidency and the country’s department of international relations were discussing the rhino question with China and Vietnam and he believed progress was being made.

WWF’s African Rhino Program co-ordinator, Dr Joseph Okori, has also called for more coordinated international efforts. He said last month: “Vietnam should follow South Africa’s example and start sending poachers, traders, smugglers and sellers to jail. In order to save rhinos from extinction, the criminal syndicates operating between South Africa and Vietnam must be uncovered and shut down for good.”

The Future of Rhino lies with captivity management