Green Earth Africa

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. 

 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.”

Gram for gram, rhino horn is worth more than gold.

So it is little surprise the animal is being hunted to extinction, which is why conservationists are pushing to create rhino-horn farms in a bid to save the creature.

Currently, horn sells for about US$60,000 (Dh220,392) a kilogram – gold is trading a shade below that at about $57,000 for the same measure – making it a prize very much worth chasing.

South Africa National Parks has lost a record 340 rhino this year, despite doubling its anti-poaching patrols.

In the past, poached rhino horns ended up in Yemen, where they were turned into traditional daggers called jambiyas. But over the past decade, demand has shifted to Asia, where they are prized as a tonic in traditional medicine.

In the past year alone Africa’s Western black rhino, and Vietnam’s Javan rhino have been hunted to oblivion. It is a trend that is set to accelerate unless the failed tactic of banning trade in rhino products is replaced, say conservationists.

“I do believe that conservationists need to investigate a legal trade in rhino horn as the current approach [trade ban] is not working, and appears unlikely to work in the foreseeable future,” says Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, a conservation economist based in Johannesburg.

“The key to the rhino’s survival is to make the animal more valuable alive than dead to the people who control its destiny,” he says.

The idea is now being cautiously investigated by the South African government, and enjoys widespread backing among local conservationists, wildlife farmers and economists.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, an international body that regulates wildlife trade, is circulating a paper that discusses the idea.

Wildlife authorities are coming to realise that banning the sale of horn has failed. As rhinos decrease in number, horn becomes more valuable, and the incentive to poach increases.

A single horn can earn a poor Mozambican labourer 200,000 rand (Dh86,815) – as much as he can hope to earn in 10 years.

Poaching is also becoming more sophisticated. Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese syndicates frequently hire professional hunters to do the killing. Using helicopters, night-vision goggles and high-power rifles fitted with silencers, they outgun underfunded national park rangers.

“The demand is for around 900 horns a year, which we could easily supply without harming an animal,” says Michael Eustace, an investment manager and wildlife economist.

Cropping of horns, which does not cause the animal any pain, and those harvested from animals that die naturally, together with existing stockpiles held by national parks, would provide the supply.

“It’s not a biological issue – it’s a market issue of supply and demand,” says Mr Eustace.

Trade could be managed through a central selling organisation (CSO) such as the one operated by De Beers that for years controlled the flow of diamonds on to the market. A CSO would only trade in legally acquired horns, and sell to registered buyers, such as Chinese state pharmaceutical companies.

Horn sales could earn southern African wildlife conservation almost 800 million rand a year, according to Mr Eustace.

The CSO would supply companies directly, cutting out middlemen and ensuring only horn from legitimate supplies were sold.

“SA alone could easily supply 400 horns a year from natural deaths, 400 from stocks and 600 from farmers cropping half their horn”, says Mr Eustace. “Based on current prices for horn, this could raise 784m rand a year for parks and wildlife.”

But it will be an uphill struggle to convince international wildlife organisations, such as the WWF, that depend on wealthy European and US donors who are less likely to support such an idea. Critics say current examples of farmed animals to serve the Asian market, such as bears and tigers, are rife with abuse and cruelty.

“If you consider the plight of tigers at the moment, which are extensively ‘farmed’ in China, there appears to be no advantage for conservation of the species,” says Francesca Shapland of the UK’s Save the Rhino foundation.

Mr Eustace dismisses the comparison. “Rhinos are not harmed in harvesting horn, which grows back. There’s no need to injure or kill the animal.”

As the killing continues, the drive to legitimise the selling of their horns is likely to gain momentum.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong customs agents have confiscated a shipment of rhino horns and ivory worth about 17.4 million Hong Kong dollars ($2.2 million) – their biggest seizure of smuggled endangered species products, officials said Tuesday.

Officials said they seized 33 rhino horns, 758 ivory chopsticks and 127 ivory bracelets concealed in a shipping container that arrived Monday at Hong Kong’s port from Cape Town, South Africa. They would not name the container’s final destination.

Customs agents X-rayed the container because its listed cargo – scrap plastic – raised a flag, said Acting Head of Ports and Maritime Command Lam Tak-fai. They found the rhino horns and ivory after peeling away layers of tinfoil, paper and plastic wrapped around the items.

Wai-king Yik, a spokeswoman for the customs and excise department, said it was a record seizure of endangered species products for Hong Kong.

The seizure tops one in August of $1.6 million worth of African ivory.

Several rhino subspecies are believed to have recently become extinct. Rhino horns are prized by Vietnamese and Chinese who believe they can cure an array of ailments, and the horns can fetch up to $50,000 per pound (about $100,000 per kilogram). Some 190 pounds (86 kilograms) worth of rhino horns were found Monday by the Hong Kong officials, who said they would have required the deaths of around 17 rhinos.

Lam told reporters it was a record seizure of rhino horns for Hong Kong. He said customs agents have occasionally found single rhino horns being smuggled in luggage by visitors to Hong Kong but this is the first time they have found a large batch hidden in a shipping container.

No one has been arrested.

Conservationists have poured cold water on the National Prosecuting Authority’s claim that it has broken the back of rhino poaching syndicates. Yet another white male rhino was killed in Limpopo on Friday night. Today scores marched against rhino poaching.
Six-year-old Phila was shot nine times in two poaching attacks. She is a black female Rhino on the red list of endangered species. Phila was brought to the Johannesburg Zoo to recover and dehorne for her own safety.

“We were really quite scared that she would not be able to hear or smell that well and those are the 2 main senses of Rhino,” says Louise Gordon from the Johannesburg Zoo.

Today, conservationists were protesting to safeguard rhinos like Phila. They say there should be harsher sentences for poachers. Some say they cannot standby and allow it to happen to allow few people to be greedy and rich.

It’s estimated that between 9 and 11 000 white rhino are left in South Africa, and just under 2 000 black rhino

The numbers are fast dwindling. In 2007 seven were poached. Two year’s later the number more than doubled. Last year there was dramatic spike and the 2011 figure already exceeding that figure.
“The species is in a negative population growth now and at the rate we seeing poaching occur it is going to accelerate so within 4 or 5 years we would be in an utterly desperate situation,” says Peter Milton, from the Strategic Protection of Threatened Species.

At the current rate of poaching a rhino is killed every 21-hours. Conservationists believe in some instances game farms execute their rhino to cashing in on insurance claims.

“With money to be made, poaching will not stop. We don’t believe the National Prosecuting Authority has broken any syndicate backs per say, and to even track those syndicates is incredibly complex and difficult,” added Milton.

Two Thai Nationals and two game farmers face a litany of charges for their part in a poaching syndicate. The cases resume in January.

Zookeepers have been warned to increase security after a conservation group declared Africa’s Western Black Rhino extinct and two subspecies at high risk.

A central African northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is listed as “possibly extinct in the wild” Photo: ALAMY

CCTV caught two members fleeing a taxidermist’s shop in the Vienna, Austria, with a stolen horn bought at an auction house by the shop owner on the previous day.

Earlier, two suspected-English men stole a 35in horn worth £100,000 from the same auctioneers. The horn, weighing nearly a stone, was taken off a white rhino shot in Sudan in the 1930s.

The Red list of Threatened Species has just been updated. New Scientist takes a closer look at some of the species unfortunate enough to find themselves on the list.

(Image: Richard Emslie)

Rhino’s end
From now on, the only place you’ll see this subspecies of black rhino from western Africa is in photographs or stuffed in museums. That’s because this year, the Western Black Rhino (Diceros bicornis longipipes) is officially extinct, and others are clinging on by a thread. In all, the IUCN says that a quarter of all mammals are at risk of extinction. It’s not all bad news though. One of conservation’s success stories is (Ceratotherium simum simum), a subspecies of the African southern white rhino, which has soared in number from less than 100 individuals to 20,000 since the end of the 19th century. 

(Image: Jörn Köhler)

Tarzan’s chameleon
Named after the town of Tarzanville in Madagascar where it was discovered in 2009, Tarzan’s chameleon is one of the most colourful of the 61,900 species on this year’s updated Red List, released today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).Calumma tarzan is critically endangered and one of 22 terrestrial reptiles listed as threatened in Madagascar, mainly because tropical forests are being cleared. 

(Image: Jean-Christophe Vie)

Coconut poachers
Prized for its supposed aphrodisiac properties, the infamous Seychelles plant Coco de Mer (Lodoicea maldivica) is in even greater danger than before, moving up the list from vulnerable to endangered. IUCN says the plant is under threat from fires and illegal harvesting of its kernels. Despite strict regulations governing collection and sale of its seed, a significant black market exists for its kernals. Globally, a fifth of plants face extinction. 

(Image: © OCEANA /Keith Ellenbogen)

Tuna warning
Five of eight species of tuna are now in the threatened or near-threatened categories, including the endangered Atlantic bluefin (Thunnus thynnus) pictured here. The others in trouble are the southern bluefin, the bigeye, the yellowfin and the albacore. The hope is that the listings will help governments introduce and enforce safeguards to preserve them. 

(Image: Jason Brown)

Hopping pharmacies
Amphibians got this name because they are rich in natural, medically useful substances. Now many are endangered, and the 26 newly discovered amphibians added to the Red List this year include the blessed poison frog (Ranitomeya benedicta), discovered 2008 in Peru, imperilled by habitat loss and the international pet trade.

A group of 19 critically endangered black rhinos have been moved from South Africa’s Eastern Cape to a new range in the Limpopo province to encourage increased breeding and population growth.  The location is the seventh new habitat established by the WWF’sBlack Rhino Range Expansion Project. 

Black rhinos moved to new home by helicopter from WWF on Vimeo.

“This was possible because of the far-sightedness of the Eastern Cape Provincial government who were prepared to become partners in the project for the sake of black rhino conservation in South Africa,” said WWF’s project leader Dr Jacques Flamand. 

“The operation was difficult due to the number of animals and the long distances involved. But wildlife veterinarians, conservation managers and capture teams from WWF, Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency, SANParks and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife worked cooperatively to ensure the success of the translocation. We all learned from one another and were united in a common cause.” 

“We are a young organisation and this is a great opportunity to be giving something back to the national conservation effort,” said Dave Balfour, conservation director of the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency. 

“We are excited about getting ourselves integrated into national conservation. A critical element of future conservation success will be the ability of agencies with a common interest to work together. This was a great example of that.” 

A relatively new capture technique was used to airlift some of the rhinos out of difficult or inaccessible areas by helicopter. This entails suspending the sleeping rhino by the ankles for a short trip through the air to awaiting vehicles. 

“Previously rhinos were either transported by lorry over very difficult tracks, or airlifted in a net. This new procedure is gentler on the darted rhino because it shortens the time it has to be kept asleep with drugs, the respiration is not as compromised as it can be in a net and it avoids the need for travel in a crate over terrible tracks,” explains Dr Flamand. 

“Another advantage is that rhinos can be more easily removed from dangerous situations, for example if they have fallen asleep in a donga or other difficult terrain after being darted. The helicopter translocations usually take less than ten minutes, and the animals suffer no ill effect. All of the veterinarians working on the translocation agreed that this was now the method of choice for the well-being of the animals.”

Security of rhinos is a major concern given the current poaching onslaught. 

Project partners receiving rhinos on their land are only chosen if their security systems are of a high standard. 

“Translocating rhinos always involves risk, but we cannot keep all our eggs in one basket. It is essential to manage black rhino populations for maximum growth as it is still a critically endangered species and this is what the project does by creating large new populations which we hope will breed quickly,” concludes Dr Flamand.

The WWF Black Rhino Range Expansion Project aims to increase the range and numbers of black rhino in South Africa and has created seven significant black rhino populations in eight years. Close to 120 black rhino have been translocated to date.

Rhino Airlift Photos: Black Rhinoceros Transported To New Home By Air.

In the past few weeks, vandals have stripped off over 20km of protective boundary fencing bordering Zimbabwe’s largest black rhino conservancy in the Midlands, leaving the endangered species vulnerable to poachers.

Sebakwe black rhino conservancy vice-chairperson Silas Chaduka told NewsDay most of the game including the endangered black rhino, were now exposed to poaching following the removal of the shielding boundary fencing.

“Game is now wandering out of the conservancy unchecked owing to the missing boundary fence which is being stolen nearly on a daily basis. Once the game moves out of the conservancy, it is at the mercy of poachers because it is difficult for us to protect it against them,” said Chaduka.

In the past few weeks, vandals stole about 5km of wire from the Belmtree side of the conservancy, 10km from Mahamara and 5km from Morina while some areas dotted around the 100 000-square-kilometre conservancy, which used to be a top foreign currency earner through tourist trophy hunting, are also without fencing.

Chaduka said there were attempts to revive the fortunes of Sebakwe conservancy which had suffered a serious dip since the farm invasions a decade ago. 

Conservancy officials refused to reveal information on the game population at Sebakwe allegedly for security reasons, but confirmed the black rhino numbers had dropped and trophy hunting was at its lowest owing to migration and poaching of game.

Officials said the black rhino herd had been seriously reduced due to poaching and fears were high that the conservancy herd could be wiped out. 

Chaduka said there was need to restock after replacing all missing lengths in the boundary fence.

“We have a serious challenge with poaching, but we are now educating communities resettled around the conservancy of the advantages derived from trophy hunting unlike poaching or killing for the pot. For instance, a leopard is valued at 
$3 000 while a lion is $7 000, but when you kill for the pot you get no funds for development,” he said.

Wildlife officials in Nepal Tuesday began a three week count of the country’s greater one-horned rhinoceroses. WWF staff members are part of a group conducting the census from atop captive Asian elephants.

Greater one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) are found in three Nepalese national parks and in northern India. The last census of greater one-horned rhinos in Nepal conducted in 2008 recorded 435 animals. Of that total, 408 were living in Chitwan National Park. 

The census is expected to show growth in rhino numbers as a result of better protection and habitat improvements.

“With increased WWF investments into anti-poaching, through a campaign codenamed “Stop the Bleeding” in the Terai Arc of Nepal, we hope to find evidence of an increasing rhino population,” says Dr. Christy Williams, WWF’s Asian Rhino and Elephant Action Strategy coordinator.

Since the last census, 28 rhinos have been killed by poachers in Chitwan, while another 32 died of natural causes, officials say. Rhino horn is prized as an ingredient in traditional Asian medicine, despite lack of scientific support for the curative claims attributed to it. 

While conducting the rhino survey, officials will also install camera traps and examine habitat quality, including determining the pervasiveness of a damaging invasive plant.

In Nepal, WWF works to protect rhinos from poachers and expand rhino range by translocating animals to new habitats.