Leading wildlife expert fears Rhinos on verge of extinction
from Geoffrey Dean in Johannesburg
Poaching of rhinoceroses in South Africa has escalated to such a
critical level that one of the African continent’s leading authorities
on the species, Clive Walker, thinks it is in danger of becoming
extinct there within five to eight years. With 109 rhinos illegally
shot by mid-March in South Africa this year, the increased scale of
the slaughter is causing major alarm in wildlife circles and the
country at large.
South African National Parks statistics show that, between 2000-7, an
average of 13 rhinos were poached each year. In 2008, the total leapt
to 88, a trend that intensified in the next twelve months when 122
were poached. This spiralled to 333 in 2010, and twelve months later,
the figure peaked at 448. If the appalling killing rate is maintained
throughout 2012, well over 500 will be lost this year. As many as
eleven were poached in the Kruger National Park on one day two months
ago.
There is disagreement over the numbers of white rhinos in South Africa
– estimates vary between fourteen and eighteen thousand, but at any
rate, close to ninety per cent of the world’s population. The country
also possesses some 2,000 of the 4,800 much rarer black rhinos on the
African continent.
Walker, who founded the Endangered Wildlife Trust in 1963, has been
actively involved in rhino conservation since the mid-‘70s. He told
The Times from his home in Vaalwater in the Limpopo province: “At the
current rate of poaching, the species could be extinct within five to
eight years. The same poaching that devastated rhino populations
elsewhere in Africa between the 1960s and ‘80s never spilled into
South Africa. We never went through the same threat faced by Kenya,
Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botwana and Mozambique.
“ As a result, we built up the largest population of both white and
black rhinos in the continent, enjoying relative security until the
‘rhino war’ started here in 2007-8. There’s a sudden realisation here
now that the situation is so bad that we have got to do something
about it. But we are going to have to spend a lot of money to ensure a
decent level of protection. Ideally, you need one man per 10 square
kilometres per day, but in somewhere like the Kruger, that’s 2,000
men, five times the current force. Where’s that money going to come
from?”
Demand for rhino horn is proving insatiable in south-east Asia,
particularly in Vietnam after one of its ministers claimed it had
cured his cancer. Horn is now fetching around US$56,000 on Asian black
markets, making an average 8kg male horn worth nearly $450,000. This
is allowing poaching syndicates to invest in hi-tech equipment and
weaponry, with some even using helicopters or planes to fly in from
neighbouring countries like Botswana and Mozambique.
While foreign nationals are conducting most of the poaching, South
Africans on the ground are being paid handsomely for giving
information on rhino locations. “Spotters get offered up to 50,000
Rand (around £4,500) to pinpoint rhinos and lead poachers in,” Li
Lotriet, the regional head of the anti-poaching security company
(QUEMIC) in the Limpopo Province, told The Times.
“That is a lot of money for these guys. No reward system can compete.
As for the poaching syndicates, no one knows how many there are. If
you take down a team today, another comes in its place tomorrow. For
them , it’s low risk and high reward. Too many of those poachers who
are caught are let out on bail and abscond. Currently waiting to go on
trial are a Mozambican chef at a lodge in the Kruger, and a park
traffic officer whom we arrested. He’s back working, and not even
suspended.”
Lotriet’s frustration was partially assuaged by the 25-year jail
sentence imposed on a poacher in January. Walker, though, sees the
best solution in dialogue with south-east Asian governments. “We have
to sit down and discuss it with them,” he said. “Not just China as
horn go everywhere else in the region. We’ve got to get an
understanding of the dynamics of the trade. It’s all very well going
to CITES to get trade in the horn legalized, and the price of it
reduced as a result, but there’s a lot of work to be done before
then.”
The next CITES meeting, however, is 13 months away. At the current
rate, more than 600 rhinos alive today will have lost their lives by
then in South Africa’s killing fields.
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