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17 rhino carcasses found in Limpopo

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 04:00:00 GMT

The anti-rhino poaching Dream Team on Thursday said it was shocked at the gruesome discovery of several rhino carcasses in Limpopo.

The discovery was made near Tzaneen last week when a helicopter flying over an apparent government game reserve spotted the dead animals.

Initial findings showed that 17 carcasses were found, but the Dream Team said there could be more in the game reserve.

This brings the number of rhinos killed this year to more than 280.

Dream Team Founder André Snyman said, “We are totally shocked about this."

He added, “I don’t think the bodies are fresh, I think that these are old bodies.”

19-Nov-10 10:00 PM

Another rhino killed

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:00:00 GMT

The body of a rhinoceros, found with the horn hacked off, was found at the Amakhala Game Reserve near Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, police said on Friday.

The body was discovered on Thursday evening after the rhino went missing on Monday afternoon, said Captain Ernest Sigobe in a statement.

"At this stage it is not clear how the suspects gained entry to the game reserve and the investigation continues and no suspects have been arrested as yet," he said.

Other game reserves in the area were urged to remain vigilant with their game and frequently visit areas where the animals grazed.

The discovery was made as a high level investigation into the discovery of the carcasses of 18 rhino at Letaba Ranch on the western border of the Kruger National Park was underway.

Game rangers this week caught three suspected poachers near Pretoriuskop as they were on their way out of the game park.

Three rhino carcasses were found in the Loskopdam area at the weekend, two more at a reserve in the Hartbeesfontein area in the North West, and a sixth near Mookgophong (Naboomspruit).

So far, 268 rhinos have reportedly been poached in South Africa in 2010.

19-Nov-10 9:00 PM

S'pore-India ink zoo tie-up

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:00:00 GMT

WILDLIFE Reserves Singapore (WRS) and the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) of India have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding (MoU).

Under the MoU, WRS will facilitate a two-week attachment on zoo management for senior management from selected Indian zoos annually, while CZA will host WRS staff in specialised workshops.

WRS is keen to learn how to breed the Indian rhinoceros and participate in conservation programmes for Asian lions. WRS also hopes to partner CZA in breeding and conserving species including the spotted mousedeer and sarus cranes.

19-Nov-10 9:00 PM

18 butchered rhino - but no answers

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:00:00 GMT

Limpopo's Department of Environmental Affairs said yesterday officials had stumbled across the rhino remains on the Letaba Ranch Game Reserve during a "routine census" in the past two weeks.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the rhino were killed on the 42000ha reserve attached to the Kruger National Park between 2005 and 2008.

But environmentalists have dismissed this explanation, saying that, in a reserve frequently crossed by hikers and tourists, it would have been impossible for the carcasses to have lain unnoticed for so long.

The department said yesterday officials undertook a "routine" game "census" over the last two weeks, during which they discovered the carcasses.

But spokesman Joshua Kwapa admitted that some of the rhino carcasses had not yet decomposed, casting doubt on the official timeline of the killing of the animals.

News of the latest rhino killings broke as the country battles sophisticated poaching syndicates which feed the trade in rhino horn.

SA National Parks spokesman Wanda Mkutshulwa said that, as of Saturday, 261 rhino had been killed for their horns this year. This excludes the 18 discovered at Letaba. In comparison, 122 were killed last year, and 83 in 2008.

Said Kwapa: "We found [the dead rhinos] a week or two ago. Some of them are just bones ... Nine of the 18 were in our register and we could account for them. We are still investigating the other nine, to account for them. We have launched a thorough investigation to try to understand what happened."

Letaba employees, who said park officials were "startled" by the discovery of so many dead rhino, added that only after an "intensive" investigation would they be able to say exactly what happened.

But Faan Coetzee, rhino security project manager of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, questioned Letaba's security, asking if it was possible to go for more than five years without discovering "so many carcasses".

"It is very disappointing to hear something like that. Their security is questionable. How can they go for five years without discovering them? There is something they are not telling us," he said.

Letaba is part of Limpopo's Ivory Trail tourist route, popular with international and local visitors.

Kwapa was unable to say why nobody had noticed the carcasses, or if Letaba employed guards. He could also not say when the last game census was held, or how many rhino lived on the reserve, where animals can walk freely between the ranch and the tourism flagship, the Kruger National Park.

It was reported early this year that many provincially administered reserves in Limpopo were in chaos, with no rangers to combat poaching or the illegal gathering of firewood by villagers.

Earlier this year, a report titled "Hunting in South Africa, a Bloody Mess", by Animal Rights Africa, said that "Traffic, an organisation that monitors the illicit trade in wildlife and plants, showed that as many as 200 rhino horns might have been illegally laundered by hunters and hunting operators".

"Rhino poaching in South Africa has reached its highest level in modern times," the report said, adding that the animals were shot under the pretext of trophy hunting but their horns were sold on the traditional medicines market.

Mkutshulwa said 133 people had been arrested for rhino poaching in the past two years.

Police believe highly sophisticated syndicates, consisting of veterinarians, wildlife experts and game farmers, are involved in the trade.

A team of police officers and officials from the National Prosecuting Authority, SANParks, the Department of Home Affairs, the SA Revenue Service and game farm owners was assembled early this year.

Mkutshulwa did not want to reveal how they planned to catch the poachers because this would warn poachers of what to expect.

According to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, trade in rhino horn is illegal.

But this has failed to stem demand for the powdered substance, used in Asian medicines and touted as a cure for cancer.

SANParks chief executive David Mabunda said in July that it was "no longer appropriate to refer to this spate of illegal killing as poaching, given the levels of sophistication, violence, precision and the money behind it".

"We are dealing with unprecedentedly high levels of organised crime, which the police and all security agencies are helping to defeat.

"We have worked hard to bring this species back from the brink of extinction and we will continue to defend it even if we become the last man standing."

19-Nov-10 9:00 PM

Rhinos in South Africa: A horny headache

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:00:00 GMT

CONTRARY to widespread belief in China and South-East Asia, the rhinoceros horn has no proven medicinal or aphrodisiac qualities. Its effect, some scientists say, is the same as chewing your fingernails. It is made of the same stuff, agglutinated hair. Yet rhino horn is currently worth more than gold, selling for up to $60,000 a kilo. That is why a beast that has been on earth for some 60m years is fighting for its existence.

So far this year, at least 260 South African rhinos have been illegally killed, a rate of nearly one a day and well over double last year’s total. Almost all were shot for their horns; these days, few are taken for bush meat. South Africa is home to more than 90% of the world’s white rhinos (the adjective is a corruption of the Dutch word wijde, meaning wide, a reference to the species’s broad mouth) and around a third of the rarer black one.

Until 1970 all had been reasonably well. Then oil prices soared, resulting in a seven-fold increase in income per head in Yemen, where elaborately carved rhino-horn dagger handles are prized as a sign of status and wealth. Yemenis rapidly became the world’s biggest importers of rhino horn. By 1980 half the world’s rhinos, by some estimates, had disappeared.

Conservationists tried to fight back. In 1976 trading in rhino horn was banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), to which 175 countries have signed up, including the four that were doing most of the importing: China, Japan and Vietnam as well as Yemen. But the trade simply moved onto the black market. By the mid-1990s, 90% of the world’s rhinos had disappeared, compared with the 1970 tally, and all of the five main rhino species were either threatened with extinction or endangered. In the whole of Africa, fewer than 2,500 black rhinos and around 7,000 white ones managed to survive.

Since then, thanks to better security and conservation methods, numbers of both species have begun to pick up again, to around 4,500 blacks and nearly 20,000 whites, concentrated in less than half a dozen countries in southern Africa. But those gains are in danger of being reversed by a new surge in poaching in South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Demand for the horn has risen along with prices, since it is now also peddled as a cure for cancer. Powerful international syndicates, using helicopters, night-vision goggles, tranquilliser darts and silenced heavy-calibre guns have got into the game.

A South African law enacted in 2008 required a permit for anyone hunting rhinos or even possessing a rhino part. But it has not deterred criminals. Nor has the average ten-year jail sentence handed down to poachers. Over the past couple of months, more than two dozen people have been arrested in South Africa for suspected rhino poaching, including 11 members of a syndicate said to be linked to big figures in President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party in Zimbabwe.

South African National Parks, one of the world’s leading conservation bodies, has now asked the government to send in the army. Calling for an immediate end to a "cruel and brutal crime", Lindiwe Sisulu, the defence minister, says the government is working on it. President Jacob Zuma has promised to take the matter up with the Southern African Development Community, a regional club. But South Africa’s authorities, along with the rhinos, face an uphill battle.

19-Nov-10 9:00 PM

What a Big Baby!

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

A rare white rhino calf – named Nyala – has been born at a wildlife park in South Cumbria.
Mother Ntombi gave birth on Sunday afternoon at South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Dalton-in-Furness following a 16-month pregnancy.

The calf was not immediately named as workers did not want to disturb mother and baby to check its gender.

The birth is extremely important as there are few breeding pairs in Europe, according to a park spokesman.

The park's other female rhino, Tala, is also due to give birth in August.

Normally the keepers name the park's new arrivals, but because of the rarity of a rhino birth, park director and owner, David Gill, named the rhino later.

A spokesperson said: "This is the biggest and most important birth we have ever had at the park."

Park officials believe that there may have only been two white rhinos born across Europe this year.

According to global conservation organisation WWF, there are only 14,538 white rhinos left in the world.

13-Jun-08 10:00 AM