Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Mozambique considers poaching law

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South African rangers to pursue poachers in Mozambique?

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This would be perhaps the first MoU to be worth the paper it's written on :-?

SA, Mozambique to sign MoU on rhino poaching

Friday 11 April 2014 20:05
SABC

Environmental Affairs is to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with its Mozambican counterpart next week, to curb rhino poaching in Southern Africa.


About 277 rhinos have been killed in South Africa since the beginning of the year. This, while awareness initiatives continue unabated.
Most of the rhino poached this year were from the Kruger National Park.


SANParks says the agreement with neighbouring Mozambique will allow South African rangers to pursue poachers even if they cross the border. "Our Minister of Environmental Affairs and her Mozambican counterpart will actually be signing a MoU which will ensure that measures which we are putting on this side of the fence in South Africa are also put in Mozambique," says SANParks Rey Thakhuli.


Meanwhile, outraged SA Citizens Against Poaching (OSCAP) says it will act against any proposals to legalise rhino horn trade.
Speaking at the end of a Rhino Trade Conference in Pretoria on Thursday, OSCAP director Allison Thomson affirmed their stand against rhino poaching.


Thomson says they are working hard, both domestically and internationally, to put a stop to any proposals to legalise rhino horn trade. Thomson said the conference ended on a positive note with participants resolving to ensure that all South Africans were made aware of the risks associated with legalising rhino horn trade.


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Re: South African rangers to pursue poachers in Mozambique?

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A positive step indeed! Would love to see the look on the faces of those bragging poacher ringleaders should our army come charging into one of their villages! :evil:


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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Watch this documentary video (undercover footage filmed in Mozambique, produced by Linda de Jager)

http://rhinokiller.co.za/


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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Richprins wrote:should our army come charging into one

Our army,..????,... ;-) let's just wait and see this one out?????? O/\

Fifty smileys will be more effectice!!!!


Heh,.. H.e
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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Can cross-border cooperation save the endangered rhino?
May 18, 2014 at 10:30 AM EDT

Video: Can cross-border cooperation save the endangered rhino?

TRANSCRIPT
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: The Kruger National Park is enormous, as big as the state of New Jersey, home to the largest population of rhinos on the planet. And they are being poached here at an alarming rate for their horns. Rhino horn is composed of the same material as a finger nail. But it is prized in Asia, especially Vietnam. Some believe it can cure cancer and boost virility So it is more valuable than gold. A pound of rhino horn sells for about $50,000. A typical horn can weigh between two and six pounds.

In Kruger Park last year 606 rhinos were killed for their horns. So far in 2014 the figure stands at 235. Johan Jooste is a former South African general commanding an aggressive anti-poaching unit in Kruger Park.

JOHAN JOOSTE: You’re dealing with armed incursion, you’re a sovereign country you have armed thieves entering your country, armed poachers, illegally. They plunder your resources and they exit illegally again.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: The rhinos are defenseless—the poachers relentless, brutal—cruel—rhinos are shot, their horns hacked off whether they are dead or alive. A tourist captured these shocking images of one rhinos suffering.

BRUCE LESLIE: I think the worst is when you come across an animal that’s alive that hasn’t been killed humanely and it’s actually bleeding out and it’s on its hindquarters and it’s trying to walk away but it can’t and its whole nasal cavity and horns are removed. Those aren’t easy. Or a calf—I’ve seen a rhino calf of a few weeks that has been shot and killed by poachers and you ask yourself, well why? Why kill the calf it doesn’t make sense. It is a symptom of the level of greed. A calf horn is tiny, but still worth something to the poachers. And poachers will not hesitate to shoot at rangers.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Mbongeni Tukela has been a park ranger for 27 years.

MBONGENI TUKELA: They can be very, very dangerous. Of late they’ve taken to bringing more firearms then you’d expect from a hunting group. They would normally bring a hunting rifle plus a protection firearm, be it a shotgun or be it an automatic weapon like an AK-47. Sometimes they even carry pistols and one group who had a grenade.

JOHAN JOOSTE: Last year we had 60 firefights, six-zero. Killing doesn’t come easy for any civilized person. In those 60 firefights 47 poachers died.

KEN MAGGS: We have 22 sections in the Kruger National Park.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: It is a small war and it is run from a tiny operations center in the park. Rangers are deployed at strategic locations across Kruger. At any given time there are between five and 15 groups of armed poachers hunting rhino in Kruger Park. Rangers patrol day and night trying to track them down. It is dangerous and difficult.

RANGER: If we find a track like this and then that is where we get our information that the movement of the poachers, how are they walking here, looking for the rhinos and then from this information is where we can start working on how are we going to get them.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Not easy for a few reasons.

KEN MAGGS: First of all they’re not scared to enter the park, they’re not scared of wild animals, they’re not scared of the dark or the night and they have no rules, absolutely no rules.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Ninety per cent of the poachers cross into the park along South Africa’s porous border with Mozambique. It’s their escape route too. Grant Knight flies support from above but he says they cannot follow the poachers into Mozambique.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Is it frustrating for you when you have to leave them?

GRANT KNIGHT: Oh big time, big time. I mean it’s such a complete barrier that the poachers know it. They know they’ve just got to get over the fence and we cannot carry on into another country and it’s a real barrier for us.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Limpopo National Park on the Mozambican side is a grim testament to the ravages of poaching. There are few animals here and no rhinos because poaching was never illegal in Mozambique. That will change this year. Afonso Madope is a director at Mozambique’s ministry of tourism. He says the laws are about to get a lot tougher.

AFONSO MADOPE: Most of the guys the poachers they were completely free because you know they were convinced that no one can do anything in order to arrest us or make their selves, their lives complicated. From now I’m convinced that will be completely different.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: At the moment though the poachers remain all powerful and they prey on people still living inside Mozambique’s Limpopo Park boundaries. The village of Mavodze in Limpopo Park is only 20 miles from the Kruger Park border. There are several communities like this scattered throughout the park, subsistence farmers and that is an important part of the equation. They don’t have much money and the poachers do. They’ll pay up to $30,000for a pair of rhino horns—huge money for people living on about $6 a day.

ANTHONY ALEXANDER, MANAGER, LIMPOPO PARK, MOZAMBIQUE: If you look at the poacher the poacher is typically 18-25 years old—young. Not many job prospects. But the money is spent at best on a house but generally on alcohol, vehicles, parties, so greed is a huge factor.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: We were told by a park official that these young men were involved in poaching—he warned us not to approach them. The older generation spoke to us but they were nervous. If they knew there were poachers in the village they didn’t say. Amelia has lived here most of her life. I would not show people the way or help them she says. If they came I would not take their money.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Thomas—one of the parks officials says he knows there are people here who do because he says there are many new houses.

THOMAS: Sometimes it’s about poaching, you know.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Yeah. So some of these houses in the village were built with money from poaching?

THOMAS: Yeah, but I don’t know actually who is poaching or not but I see the house. In a few moment I see the house, you know.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Mozambican park rangers have the weapons to prove it—these are from recently arrested poachers.

JOSE SITHOI: Because they are ready to fight.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: So, they use the AK-47 to shoot against the rangers, and they use this weapon here?

JOSE SITHOI: For rhinos.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: For the rhinos.

JOSE SITHOI: For the rhinos.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: On the South African side the Kruger rangers are training to fight back. In this simulation “poachers’ are tracked. The ensuing staged firefight involves live ammunition. And it all ends with a capture. South Africa and Mozambique have just signed an agreement of co-operation. Soon rangers from both countries will be free to conduct joint operations and South African rangers will be able to chase poachers into Mozambique.

JOHAN JOOSTE: This agreement has the potential to change it over the next year most definitely. One will be able to pursue with a joint operation across the border. Mozambique park ranger Jose Sithoi says he is looking forward to working with the South Africans.

JOSE SITHOI: South Africa itself cannot fight against poacher alone and Mozambique, too, cannot fight against poacher alone. We are fighting against the same enemy and therefore we have to be united.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: It is a significant development—perhaps a turning point in this war because in the last 6 years 1500 rhinos have been slaughtered in Kruger Park alone. The black rhino is now classified as critically endangered, the white rhino near threatened. The frontline rangers in Mozambique and South Africa offer the best hope in this determined effort to save the rhino.

BRUCE LESLIE: We are not going to go away. They need to stop and turn around and walk away because we are not going away. We are here forever and we are going to ensure that the rhino are here forever.


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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Soon rangers from both countries will be free to conduct joint operations and South African rangers will be able to chase poachers into Mozambique.

I sincerely hope that comes to pass, as the latest wording from DEA was far less clear!

If so, it should be shouted to the heavens! Put up posters at border and Park gates! \O \O \O


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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Mozambique: Minister Calls for United Effort Against Poaching

18 JUNE 2014

Maputo — Mozambique needs to unite the efforts of all the parties interested in fighting against poaching, urged Tourism Minister Carvalho Muaria on Wednesday.

Speaking at a Maputo workshop held by the WorldWide Fund for Nature (WWF) on the strategy to fight against poaching and the illegal trade in wildlife products, Muaria said that international organised crime syndicates are targeting rhinoceros and elephant populations in southern Africa.

The disappearance of such flagship species, he warned “will have a negative impact on tourism and on socio-economic development”.

Muaria admitted that Mozambique has become a corridor for smuggling to Asian destinations the horns of rhinos killed in South Africa.

He stressed the importance of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Mozambique and South Africa in April, intended to strengthen the fight against rhino poaching, and a new law on conservation areas which dramatically increases the penalties for poaching protected species.

The law proposes prison sentences of between eight and 12 years for people who kill, without a licence, any protected species, or who use banned fishing gear, such as explosives or toxic substances. The same penalty will apply to people who set forests or woodlands on fire (poachers often use fire to drive animals into the open).

Anybody using illegal firearms or snares, even if they do not catch protected species, can be sentenced to two years imprisonment.

In addition, those found guilty of the illegal exploitation, storage, transport or sale of protected species will be fined between 50 and 1,000 times the minimum monthly national wage in force in the public administration (at current exchange rates, that would be a fine of between 4,425 and 88,500 US dollars).

Mozambican conservationist Madyo Couto noted that both the black rhino and the white rhino, which had been reasonably abundant in the 1960s, are now extinct in Mozambique. However, Mozambicans are still killing rhinos - he said that many of the poachers who kill rhinos in South Africa's Kruger National Park are recruited in Mozambique.

Some Mozambican policemen are also involved, by hiring guns out to poachers, Couto said. He noted that the same police gun was seized from poachers in South Africa and returned to the Mozambican police three times.

Police involvement in poaching was so rampant that the entire police unit in Massingir, on the border with the Kruger Park, was transferred at the start of this year.

Poaching had also “contaminated” staff in the Limpopo National Park. Couto said that several wardens and senior park officials were recently sacked for their involvement in these illicit activities.

Mozambique still has around 22,000 elephants, but these too are under threat, as poachers hack out their tusks to supply the thriving Asian ivory market, particularly in China. Couto said there had been an alarming rise in elephant poaching in the Niassa Reserve in the far north of the country.

Between 2009 and 2011 the number of elephant carcasses spotted from the air more than tripled, from 83 to 271.

Ivory and rhino horn are smuggled to the Asian market through Mozambican ports and airports. There have some successes in that shipments are occasionally seized. Couto said that 20 rhino horns were seized at Maputo International Airport in 2013, and a further six in the first quarter of 2014.

In January 2011, 126 elephant tusks were seized in the northern port of Pemba, where they had been hidden in a container full of logs.

Couto feared that most smuggled ivory goes undetected since less than five per cent of containers are properly inspected.

Jo Shaw, from the WWF's South African rhino conservation programme, pointed out that threatened species can come back from the brink of extinction. In the early 20th century only 50 white rhinos were known to be in existence - but now there are 20,000, around 19,000 of which are in South Africa.

Rhino populations in South Africa are still growing - but at current levels of poaching, Shaw feared that within the next couple of years the rhino death rate could exceed the birth rate.

She argued that the markets for rhino horn (mostly in Vietnam nowadays) must be targeted with messages that dissuade people from buying powdered horn. Wealthy Vietnamese buy the powder, partly because of its fictitious medicinal qualities, and partly because it is a status symbol.

Shaw was hopeful that demand for rhino horn could be reduced by properly targeted messages informing the consumers that the horn consists of keratin, precisely the same protein that is found in human fingernails.


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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Kruger Park's sugar road to rhino hell

Poachers are using corporate canelands as an open "highway" from Mozambique into the Kruger National Park.

Mozambican poachers infiltrating the Kruger National Park to kill rhinos have found a "highway" through the sugar cane fields of a neighbouring property, say anti-poaching operatives.

A record 54 poachers were arrested in the Kruger in October and many used this route through Tongaat Hulett's land to get into the game reserve from Mozambique, according to the operatives.

An incursion along the "highway" two weeks ago led to a shootout between rangers and three suspected poachers, during which two of the suspects were killed and the third managed to escape back into Mozambique.

A rifle, ammunition and other hunting equipment were confiscated.

"The Kruger has experienced an increase in armed incursions recently, resulting in 14 contacts between armed poaching gangs and our joint forces," said the park's spokesperson, Reynold Thakhuli. "The latest arrests bring the total for the year to 144, the highest number of suspected poachers arrested in the park to date."

Thakhuli confirmed that incursions had taken place through the 14,000 hectare Massitonto concession controlled by agriculture and agri-processing business Tongaat Hulett. The cane fields adjoin the eastern fence of the Kruger in the central region of the park and are close to Magude village, one of the main thoroughfares of rhino horn smuggling in Mozambique.

Tongaat Hulett's concession is part of the Greater Lebombo Conservancy. Various private game reserves are putting measures in place to secure the 2,680km2 against poachers.

Open to exploitation

According to anti-poaching operatives in Mozambique who did not want to be named, the Tongaat Hulett property is relatively open and is being exploited by poachers to gain access to the Kruger, mostly at night. The game fence along the border is insufficient to prevent human infiltration.

Communications between park officials and Tongaat Hulett, which the Mail & Guardian has seen, indicate incursions through the Massitonto concession have been a problem for several years but have escalated in recent months.

At least 581 rhinos have been killed in the Kruger this year and about 80% of the poachers involved came from Mozambique, according to Johan Jooste, the retired major general who heads up the Kruger's anti-poaching forces.

The total tally throughout South Africa reached 899 by the end of October and, given the average poaching rate of three rhinos a day, 2014 is likely to surpass the record 1 004 rhinos killed 2013.

"A conservative estimate is that about a dozen groups of three poachers each are operating in the park at any time – about 36 to 40 poachers," Jooste said in an interview with Africa Geographic in August.

"There are about three groups entering and exiting the park every day. A poaching group can spend up to four or five days in the park."

Escalating situation

Despite many meetings and communications between Kruger officials and Tongaat Hulett management in Mozambique, the situation has continued to escalate. This week a meeting was set up between Jooste and Tongaat Hulett chief executive Peter Staude for later this month.

With its high-yield soil, subtropical climate and good water resources, the Lebombo border region is sweet for sugar producers. Tongaat Hulett is one of several South African companies expanding canelands in the region.

The cane supplies a mill called Xinavane, about 136km north of Maputo. Tongaat Hulett owns 88% of the company operating the mill, Açucareira de Xinavane, and the Mozambican government owns the remaining share.

Sugar production capacity at the Xinavane mill has reached more than 240,000 tonnes in a 32-week crushing season and is expected to grow in the future, according to Tongaat Hulett's 2014 annual report.

The company executive responsible for its Mozambique operations, Rosario Cumbi, has met Kruger officials several times in the past. Two Kruger field rangers were sent to the Massitonto concession for two weeks to provide training to staff members working there.

But the Kruger officials said this week their suggestions on how to improve anti-poaching interventions at Massitonto were not being implemented with the necessary sense of urgency.

Security interventions
Cumbi said various security interventions had been implemented at Massitonto. These included assigning 14 security guards from the Xinavane mill to Massitonto, as well as six field rangers from the local community, who have undergone anti-poaching training at the Maputo Elephant Reserve.

"There are also four policemen, two of whom have undergone anti-poaching training at the Maputo Elephant Reserve. In essence, there are 12 people patrolling in the area at any given time. They work in two shifts of 12 people each, seven days' work and seven days' rest," Cumbi said.

Tongaat Hulett spokesperson Michelle Jean-Louis said the company had approached the Mozambican government "to assist with developing a broader approach to dealing with this concern".

About 1,500 Mozambicans were undergoing anti-poaching training under the auspices of the ministries of interior and of tourism. They would be distributed throughout the wildlife areas of Mozambique and the indications were that 20 people would be assigned to Massitonto.

The meeting between company executives and Jooste, scheduled for 18 November, would "identify any further actions that Tongaat Hulett can undertake with the Kruger to further secure the land managed by the company in the Massitonto district", Jean-Louis said.

Cash influx

Counter-wildlife trafficking programmes in Mozambique were given a boost last week when the Peace Parks Foundation pledged R30 million to assist the Mozambican government to implement practical measures to tackle crossborder incursions by poachers.

The deal focused chiefly on bolstering anti-poaching co-operation in and around the Limpopo National Park, which adjoins the northern part of the Kruger to form the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

It also included training and equipment for rangers in Mozambique, the establishment of research capabilities and support for anti-trafficking policy-making.

Anti-poaching operatives working south of the transfrontier park, where poverty and corruption serve to help the poachers to cross the border, said this week they were not convinced the Peace Parks deal would stem the flow along the poaching highway.


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Re: Cross-Border Poaching KNP - Mozambique

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Mozambique has just submitted its National Rhino and Ivory Action Plan 2015-2016 to CITES, 3 months late!

REPUBLIC OF MOZAMBIQUE. MINISTRY FOR THE COORDINATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION. NATIONAL RHINO AND IVORY ACTION PLAN (NIRAP) 2015 – 2016


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