Counter Poaching Efforts

[Richprins]

Thanks, vinkie!

Botswana don't take nonsense, and keenly appreciate the value of rhino as a tourist attraction. They also have the death penalty...

[Flutterby]

Maybe we should send all our rhinos there!

[Richprins]

Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini said communities needed to expose those behind rhino poaching.

"Why don't you tell us? Who are these people who are doing such a horrible thing?" he asked.

Communities could not say there was no one in their midst who was involved in poaching.

Historically, hunting in the Zulu kingdom was controlled by the king, and this hunting was for the purposes of livelihood and not for profit, he said.

"We beg you to stop this nonsense."

The King is not starving, or lacking in funds. This sounds a bit like "Marie Antoinette...let them eat cake!" At least he's interested!

[Toko]

Thanks, vinkie!

Botswana don't take nonsense, and keenly appreciate the value of rhino as a tourist attraction. They also have the death penalty...

B. has vitually no rhino in the wild, most of the few are private owned and then there are two larger breeding herds in sanctuaries, but they try to establish a stable population in the Okavango, some have already been reintroduced into the region.

[Richprins]

Yup! They are where we may be in a few years, and are smarting about it!

[Toko]

Welcome to Africa, without the rhinos

May 24 2013 at 06:00pm
By ARTHI SANPATH and NONDUMISO MBUYAZI


Durban - Dwindling numbers of KwaZulu-Natal’s rhino population could be disastrous for the province’s tourism sector.

There are concerns that should the rhino population in KZN be decimated, there would be no attraction for tourists to come to the province.

Tourism KZN said rhino poaching would definitely have a knock-on effect on the R7-billion tourism industry, as 27 percent of KZN’s international tourists visited the province for the nature and wildlife.

KZN is home to roughly 21 percent of South Africa’s white rhinos and 24 percent of the country’s critically endangered black rhino population.



So dire is the situation that smaller private game reserves are selling their rhinos to larger reserves as it has become too expensive to protect the animals from poachers.

Tourism KZN’s chief executive Ndaba Khoza said the latest figures indicated that about 1 million tourist came to KZN in the last financial year, spending an average of R7 000 per person.

Khoza said the industry could not envisage a future of tourism without the Big Five and it was working with KZN Ezemvelo to arrest the disaster.

Dulcie Olivier, the general manager of Thanda Private Game Reserve in northern Zululand, a five-star lodge that boasts the Big Five said: “You can get wonderful rooms, sea views and landscapes in many other parts of the world, but the Big Five you get here in KZN, and if we don’t protect the animals, we will lose tourists to other provinces.”

Thanda is one of the many reserves showcasing their attractions at the Tourism Indaba being held at the ICC this weekend, and Olivier said there were definite fears in the game reserve industry over the plight of the rhinos.



Market

Simon Naylor, the reserve manager for And Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in northern KZN, said losing rhino in KZN would be “disastrous” for the wildlife tourism market.



Don Airton, the chairman of the Zululand Rhino Reserve, said when tourists came to game reserves, they asked to see the lions and rhinos.

“There is certainly more and more interest as to what is happening with rhinos, and international tourists come to see rhinos as part of their experience in the country,” said Airton.



Sheelagh Antrobus, the co-ordinator of Project Rhino KZN, which arranges anti-poaching initiatives, said game reserves undertook community development initiatives such as supporting community schools and crèches, but the sustainability of these were directly related to KZN’s ability to maintain its attraction as a top tourist destination.



At the Tourism Indaba today, Fritz Breytenbach, a ranger with the Tintswalo Safari Lodge in Mpumalanga which has an open boundary to the Greater Kruger National Park, will announce his 1 000km walk that begins on Wednesday through the Manyeleti Reserve and the Kruger National Park.

He aims to raise awareness, and engage with communities to inform authorities of any planned rhino poaching.

“We all need to do something and this is my way of helping to stop poaching,” said Breytenbach.

His walk is part of the Tintswalo Property Group’s Tintswalo Rhino Extreme Campaign to raise R5 million to stop rhino poaching.

The battle against rhino poaching was given a major boost this week when Ezemvelo confirmed it had signed a R4m sponsorship, one-year deal securing the use of several aircraft to patrol several game reserves and parks.



The Post Office has decided to bring in a postal stamp celebrating the Big Five, and called for aspiring designers to submit designs, which will be turned into postcards. - Independent on Saturday

[Flutterby]

The Post Office has decided to bring in a postal stamp celebrating the Big Five, and called for aspiring designers to submit designs, which will be turned into postcards. - Independent on Saturday

Perhaps our Spotted Genet should have a go!

[vinkie]

Drones join war on rhino poachers in South Africa

By Aislinn Laing, Greater Kruger National Park

7:00PM BST 27 May 2013

An unmanned drone has been deployed to track suspected poachers in South Africa for the first time to help tackle the number of endangered rhino deaths. Aislinn Laing witnessed the event in Kruger Park.

Circling 600 feet above the ground, its thermal camera trained on the scrubland below, the drone keeps silent watch for its target.

When a telltale white blur appears on screen, the aircraft will drop closer to earth to confirm the identity of its quarry before summoning armed backup.

This is not the militant strongholds of Afghanistan or Pakistan but the African bush. The target is the critically-endangered black rhino and those illegally hunting it.

As the demand for rhino horn soars, driven by buyers in Asia for its reputed medicinal properties, so too does the sophistication of the poachers.

Faced with hunting gangs using helicopters, night-vision goggles and high-powered rifles, those protecting the rhinos are also being forced to up their game.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... frica.html

[vinkie]

American helps deploy drones to nab rhino poachers in Africa

By Erika Bolstad | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Posted on Tuesday, May 28, 2013



WASHINGTON — The exact location of the anti-poaching operation is secret, as is the number of rangers who will be on duty. Also confidential: where the drones will fly as they search out poachers intent on slaying rhinos for their horns – one killed every 11 hours in South Africa alone.

But over the next several days, Tom Snitch thinks that his project, at a private game farm adjoining South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park, will prove that unmanned aerial vehicles can end the scourge of rhinoceros poaching.

Demand for rhino horn has boomed in recent years, with criminal syndicates offering as much as $30,000 a pound for the horns. Poachers already have killed 350 rhinos in South Africa this year; last year, 668 endangered rhinos died for their horns. They’re sold in Asia, particularly in Vietnam, where ground-up horns are touted as a cure for hangovers, cancer and other ailments, and where rising incomes have made the horns accessible to more people and their possession a status symbol. Save the Rhino International, a conservation group, won’t talk about the street value of rhino horn, saying that any mention “stimulates poaching.”

Snitch, who’s on the board of visitors of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, hopes to use predictive technology to deploy the drones. His team will use the same software that helps predict where terrorists might plant bombs and that recently helped nab arsonist suspects accused of torching more than 60 houses on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Although controversial in their military use, drones have unlimited civilian applications that many hope to deploy in the U.S. in law enforcement, farming and other uses, pending Federal Aviation Administration approval.

In Africa, they’ll use small, hand-launched Falcon UAVs that weigh about 12 pounds and have a range of about six miles. Their mathematical modeling, as well as their eyes in the sky, should catch rhino poachers before they act, Snitch said. His team’s goal: Use patterns to anticipate where poachers will be, and then quickly mobilize game wardens to intercept them. They’ll gather information about previous events and plug it into their formula: weather conditions, the number of poachers working when rhinos were killed, how far they are from borders and other facts they think are helpful.

"We look at previous events," Snitch said. "We statistically re-create the environment of when the incident happened. Was it a full moon? No moon? Was the wind out of the east? Was it raining? What time did it happen? What day of the week? What else was going on?”

"We start layering in this data. And then you put animal movement patterns on top of it,” he said. “On nights where this happened, where were the rangers deployed? Where do we think these people came from?"

Wildlife groups say they’re eager to deploy the technology to combat poachers, and not merely to "document the demise of nature," said Carter Roberts, the president of the World Wildlife Fund.

"We’re not winning this battle," Roberts said recently at a conference in Washington that looked at the civilian use of drones. "It’s become a huge crisis, and the bad guys are extremely sophisticated. They have night-vision goggles. They’ve got helicopters. They have all kinds of funding and resources, and we need to up our game to combat what we’re dealing with."

The wildlife conservation group recently received a $5 million grant from Google’s foundation to help the Namibian government use a drone to help catch poachers there. Roberts, who was in Nepal recently to relocate and tag rare tigers, said it was dispiriting to place $10,000 radio collars on the animals and then to learn they’ve disappear at the hands of poachers. Drones could have helped, he said.
"There’s got to be a way to have real-time data on the animals, real-time data on the poachers and then a software system that enables us to mobilize people to get to the right place at
the right time," Roberts said.

Top-secret U.S. drone operations have killed thousands of suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and the Obama administration hasn’t been forthcoming with the legal basis of its targeted killing program. But few people question the utility of drones in catching poachers in wilderness areas. Not only are there few privacy concerns in these areas, but they’ve also been ravaged in recent years by the demand for rhino horns.
One week earlier this month, South Africa lost 13 rhinos in Kruger National Park. Two poaching suspects were arrested and one was wounded in a shootout with rangers, who found a .458 hunting rifle, a silencer, ammunition and an ax and knife.

The criminal syndicates have even tempted some of the people whose job it is to protect rhinos. In neighboring Mozambique, investigators think that rangers helped poachers kill all the rhinos in the section of the park that borders South Africa. Mozambique is widely considered the entry point for many of the poachers who enter South Africa.
Snitch calls his project a modest one, fueled mostly by his longtime interest in Africa. He helped get his team to Africa with frequent flier miles, and he handled the export permits required for drone demonstration himself.

He and his wife have visited South Africa repeatedly over the years, spending most of their time in remote, primitive camps where they can hike through parks with guides for up-close views of elephants, rhinos, cheetahs and other wildlife. As poaching swept South Africa’s rhino populations in recent years, Snitch wondered what he could do to help.
He’s also affiliated with DigitalGlobe, a company that specializes in using satellite imagery and data to solve problems. So he thought he might be able to use mapping knowledge to help crack the poaching problem.
He hopes that his work with drones at a private reserve will persuade the South African government to use the technology in its public parks.
“As soon as we demonstrate this, I believe the South African parks will come and say, ‘OK, you took the risk. You showed it can work. Now we want to get involved,’ ” he said.

Helping African governments catch poachers also is a big deal to U.S. authorities, who awarded $10 million in grants from 2011 to 2012 to support such efforts across the continent. That money was matched by $13 million from other sources, including conservation organizations and African governments, and went to 122 projects in 25 African countries.

Some of the grant money from the United States comes from seizing the assets of people who’ve been caught buying and selling rhino horns in the U.S. On May 15, a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced two California businessmen, Vinh Chung "Jimmy" Kha and Felix Kha, as part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-led "Operation Crash." (A crash is a group of rhinos.) The investigation netted 14 people in the United States who are accused of buying and selling rhino horn for markets in Vietnam and other Asian countries.

The forfeited assets include $800,000 in cash, gold, jewelry and precious stones that will be turned over to the Multinational Species Conservation Fund, said Dan Ashe, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Rhinos in Africa are being poached to the brink of extinction because of the demand for rhino horn," Ashe said after the sentencing. "It’s only fitting that the ill-gotten gains of rhino horn traffickers be used to protect those animals that remain in the wild."

U.S. officials who oversee work in the region are concerned in particular about unrest in the Central African Republic, where the forest elephant population faces a threat from rebel groups.
They’d love to get in there to see what’s going on, but the remote region is unsafe and nearly inaccessible, said Richard Ruggiero, the chief of the Near East, South Asia and Africa branch of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Division of International Conservation. Drones, he said, would be ideal to shed light on the scope of the problem.
"It would be a perfect application," he said.

Conservation groups also are targeting demand for the product, which is a more puzzling problem, said Matt Lewis, an African species expert for the World Wildlife Fund. One ad campaign in Vietnam pictures a rhino with human feet growing where its horn should be. In an effort to disgust people, the campaign emphasizes that rhino horn is made of keratin, the same ingredient as human fingernails. One private game reserve in South Africa is injecting the horns of its rhinos with pink dye and a poison that’s safe for the rhinos but dangerous to anyone who grinds it up and consumes it.

In South Africa, there’s a campaign to paint rhino poaching as deplorable and protection of the species as a patriotic duty. Billboards near many parks show gruesome images of slain rhinos, and arrests are up.

Although many of the parks have poor cellphone reception, people driving through the parks often try to post on Twitter to alert fellow visitors to spectacular sightings. Everyone is willing to share cheetah and wild dog sightings, and they happily post the coordinates for roaming herds of elephants they’ve spotted. The exception is the rhino: No one tweets about seeing them for fear of alerting poachers to their whereabouts.
There’s something majestic and ancient about rhinos, conservationists say, and they’ve worked hard to restore populations that nearly went extinct a century ago.

"We don’t want it to be on our shoulders, to be the ones responsible for the extinction of a species that’s been on Earth for millions of years," Lewis said. "I think we should just pull out all stops and say this cannot happen on our watch, and we cannot let rhinos go extinct. We cannot be the ones to let that happen."

Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/28/1 ... es-to.html

[Toko]

Rhino survival at tipping point?
Tue, 28 May 2013 2:47 PM

Conservationist Braam Malherbe asks if rhinos have reached the tipping point in their survival and looks at the true situation regarding the poaching crisis.

This year, 2013, may be the critical turning point for the survival of the remaining rhinos on earth. Rhino horn poaching is close to resulting in more deaths than calves being born. Have we reached a tipping point to their survival, what is the true situation and what are the solutions?

The official death toll for rhinos killed in poaching incidents in 2012 was 668, including an estimated 30 critically endangered black rhinos. This figure was up from 448 in 2011, of which 19 were black rhino. This equates to almost two rhinos killed every day for 365 days. By the 25th May 2013, the death toll had already reached 350, with most of the animals dying gruesome deaths.

Many solutions have been put forward to curb rhino poaching, but no single one has been successful. A more integrated approach needs to be adopted for such a multifaceted problem to be addressed. There are over 400 ‘help save the rhino’ initiatives globally - most are well intentioned, but many are fraudulent.

As an Honorary Ranger for SANParks, I have spent many years exploring the potential solutions to saving this iconic species from extinction. I have seen many butchered rhino carcasses, and watched as rhinos tried to stand, their faces hacked to pieces as the M99 drug used by the poachers, wore off.

This is war. From rangers euthanaising calves because there was no hope for them, to a bull lying drowned in a dam from his wounds, to a poacher pleading for his life.

Conservationists are at war too - lobbying their positions, competing between their different rhino conservation organizations and Governments. This divisiveness is undermining - We must unite in our efforts if we are going to win this war.

Currently, rhino conservation still relies heavily on external funding and is governed by politics. Any real solution must be ecologically and economically sustainable, based on renewable resources and self-funding. We have heard about poisoning the horn, dehorning, legalizing trade, fighting the poachers, education, sustainable hunting, etc. Which of these solutions is truly viable?

An analysis of the potential solutions:

1. Dehorning rhino in large reserves such as Kruger National Park (KNP)

The Kruger National Park is a massive 2 million hectares. I do not believe it is feasible to de-horn rhino in the KNP en masse for a number of reasons: the challenge and cost of tracking and darting the animals will be huge. I believe the money could be put to better use. Poachers are often active at night and may still kill dehorned animals. It may only be feasible to dehorn rhino in strategic areas on the Parks boundary, which may force poachers deeper into the Park where they can be more easily detected and caught.

2. Dehorning rhino in smaller reserves

Most private owners currently dehorn their rhino. While costly, they have little alternative. Private rhino owners no longer want to own the animals, as it has become a high risk, high cost business. Unless game owners are financially incentivized to own rhino, there is little hope for their survival on private land.

3. Taking the fight to the poachers

The KNP has approximately 10 000 rhinos, or 48% of the national total. The Park is almost 2 million hectares in extent, or 20 000 square kilometers, with a 400km porous border with Mozambique. This is where most of the poaching is taking place. It is the epicenter of the rhino wars. 72% of all rhino poached in 2011 were in the KNP. A similar figure was posted for 2012, and already as at 24 April 2013, of the 249 rhino poached in South Africa, 180 have been in the KNP. That is already 72% for this year. I believe, with the current escalation, we will see well over 800 of these iconic animals butchered before the end of 2013.

KNP (and many other reserves) have decided that the best way to stop rhino poaching is to take the fight to the poachers. They have increased their ground forces and introduced intense clandestine paramilitary training for their rangers. Instead of waiting for the poachers to strike, rangers are seeking them out more successfully than before. Of the 60 arrests made in South Africa as at the end of March 2013, 36 were in the KNP.

I feel strongly that our rangers, who risk death in a confrontation with armed poachers, should be financially incentivized. A field ranger is not highly paid. To expect him to risk his life to save a rhino when he has a family to feed is a big ask. Most are dedicated but some are open to temptation to collude with the enemy. Simple GPS co-ordinates from a cell phone, giving the location of a rhino to a poacher, may secure a significant sum of money for a struggling family.
These rangers deserve to be acknowledged. A financial incentive, media recognition and possibly a medal, could go a long way in raising the bar of taking the war to the poachers.

There are more willing poachers than there are rhino. The elements driving the rhino killings are highly organized crime syndicates who will stop at nothing to fuel the trade.

4. Educating the end users of rhino horn

The largest demand for rhino horn is for traditional medicine in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam and China. I believe in the importance of education and public information campaigns explaining that rhino horn has no nutritional or medicinal value, but I do not believe that this will have any effect on even curbing the onslaught on our rhino before the last animal has dropped. Tradition is not something easily changed.

5. Poisoning the horn

The Lion and Rhino Park near Krugersdorp introduced an ectoparasiticide in 2010. The rhino is anaesthetized and the horn is then treated with the formula by infusing it into the base of the rhino’s horn. A pressure capsule allows the formula to permeate upwards through the fibres of the horn, effectively 'spoiling' the horn. The ectoparisiticide is claimed to have adverse effects on a human that ingests the horn, such as stomach problems and severe headaches, yet apparently no negative effects on the rhino itself or any other wildlife that might come into contact with it.

Infusing the horns with ectoparasiticides, coupled with an indelible dye, may protect rhinos from poaching, but it is expensive. Treating the horn costs between R8000 and R12 000 per rhino. The treatment lasts about four years, after which re-administration is necessary.

If trade in rhino horn is legalized, a poisoned horn, which could have earned conservation income, is wasted. Further, a poacher can not see if the horn is poisoned at night and will, in all likelihood, kill the animal anyhow.

6. Legalizing trade in rhino horn

In 1977 CITES placed a ban on ‘trade in rhino horn’. History has taught us many times that no ban has ever been a solution; it simply fuels the criminal financial system. More importantly, it now appears that if we are to protect the species, legalizing trade seems to be the only sustainable solution.

"Keeping rhino has become extremely costly," says Pelham Jones, chairman of the Private Rhino Owners Association.

"Our rhino are worth more dead than alive. It is costly to de-horn the animals, but we need to if we are to keep them safe," he stresses. Pelham has also said that, "the actions of the anti trade lobby are actively aiding and abetting the poaching syndicates by ensuring there is no legal trade, thus keeping the black market open for the criminals to continue to exploit and profit by stripping South Africa’s national reserves and the private rhino owners who have invested over R1billion of their assets. All this with no regard to animal welfare or international conservation."

Michael Eustace, a respected environmental economist and asset manager, says "the ban in trade in rhino horn has been a dismal failure, pushing the trade underground where it has thrived."

"Southern Africa could supply the market with 676 horns a year from natural deaths alone. There are also legal stockpiles of over 5000 horns. Southern Africa could easily supply the market with 940 horns a year and increase this by 40 horns a year from natural deaths, provided poaching was controlled.

"In addition, private farmers in South Africa could provide the equivalent of 1000 horns, or 4000kg a year, by cropping their horns. The horn re-grows at the rate of 0,8kg a year. In theory, Southern Africa could provide the market with 1940 horns a year, or more than twice the current demand.

"To trade internationally, CITES needs to approve a change in the rules, and for that to happen, 66% of the 175 member countries, or 116 countries, need to vote in favor of the change."

Many people believe that if the market is flooded with horn, it will create a bigger market because of cheaper prices. If trade is legalized, it needs to be carefully controlled and regulated. Furthermore, legalizing trade would bring billions of rands into the country, which could go back into conservation.

7. Conservation and hunting

The hunting industry brings approximately R8 billion into the South African economy annually. Furthermore, according to Adri Kitshoff, CEO of the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa, approximately R7million goes directly towards conservation projects, such as the South African Wildlife College.

Professor Wouter Van Hoven, Director for Wildlife Management, University of Pretoria, says: "In 1965, after colonialists decimated Africa’s game, the total number of wildlife remaining was estimated at 500 000."

"Trophy hunting was the kick-start to the private sector’s interest in conservation, namely game ranching. Since 1965 the numbers increased to an estimated 20, 000, 000 today. Hunting and trophy hunting is the biggest contributor to the abundance of wildlife in South Africa today."

"If rhinos are available for sustainable trophy hunting, and more importantly, rhino horn commercial production without having to sacrifice any animals, their numbers will increase because many game ranchers will enter the rhino ranching market and invest in their protection," he concludes.

Pelham Jones adds, "When one considers that approximately 0.5% of the rhino population, or around 100 animals, have been hunted annually by legitimate 'Trophy Hunters', bringing some R90 million back into conservation. The animals hunted were at the end of their lives and no longer reproductive. This sustainable utilization is one of only three economic pillars supporting 'Rhino Economics', the other two being a tourism value and an ownership value which is associated with asset and population growth."

8. Destroy the syndicates

One other key to solving the rhino crime situation is for Government to invest heavily in destroying crime syndicates. This is just another way to look at reducing demand and ultimately introducing responsible trade that can benefit the range countries holistically.

In conclusion, think multiple solutions.

There is no such thing as a single solution to end rhino poaching; we will have to gather an arsenal of tools to form a successful strategy.

This article provides a broad overview of the rhino crisis and considers the most effective ways to stop the slaughter. We need a fundamental paradigm shift in our current failed rhino conservation strategy and a far more collaborative approach in seeking solutions.

We must make informed decisions, remove sentiment and take decisive action in helping win the rhino wars. It was Elie Wiesel who said,

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim."