Rhino poaching and possible solutions

Rhino killing in Africa continues more or less unabated. 

The “official” figure for 2012 is 633 rhinos poached, the majority in South Africa’s flagship Kruger National Park. This is likely to be a low-ball number. One source dated in mid-December has suggested 699. I would not be a bit surprised if the true number was well over 700.

Then of course comes the question of how many of these victims were pregnant females. 

This poignant picture, sent by Dr. CR “Bossie” Boshoff to all members of a wildlife vet listserv shows a tiny foetus found in the uterus of one such animal. 

 

 

Here is another pair of photos, these ones from Dr. Lin-Mari de Klerk-Lorist the State Veterinary office in the Kruger. 

The lactating cow was already pregnant, and her accompanying 2.5 year-old calf was killed. Three animals down in one nasty raid!

There are reports that about 600 people have been arrested in connection with this crime, but how many of them will actually be found guilty, or receive sentences that will send the preventive message?

The recent sentence of 40 years given to  Chumlong  Lemtongthai  might have some effect, but it might not. Life sentences and the death penalty have not stopped murders.

As I have written before, paltry sentences have been quite useless in Kenya and I still wonder how many links in the money chain there are so that the actual real cash goes to some high-placed politician or a person with those sorts of contacts. When the price of horn exceeds the price of gold by a factor of two, temptation is enormous. 

Forty years ago, as Ian Parker wrote in his book What I Tell You Three Times is True, the president’s wife was a major player in the export of ivory. Nobody was going to be able to stop that.

The critical thing to remember is that so far any and all attempts to stop the poaching have more or less failed, at least in parts of Africa. It would seem that an alternative strategy and thinking process is needed. If not an alternative, at least an effective parallel one.

On Dec 16 Robert Godec, the United States ambassador to Kenya, wrote a 134 word op-ed piece in Kenya’s Daily Nation  newspaper titled “We need to work together to save Africa’s threatened wildlife from greedy poachers.”

His most crucial sentences were as follows:
“And most importantly, we need to persuade individuals to stop buying ivory, rhino horn, and other products that require the slaughter of wildlife.

In short, we need to galvanise bold, comprehensive, worldwide action against poaching. We need to stop the organised and criminal slaughter of wildlife.”

In the Oct-Dec issue of Swara  the magazine arm of the East African Wildlife Society there are two articles on the subject of rhino poaching. The first is an opinion piece by Kenneth K. Coe, who styles himself as an Asian American. He is chairman of the Nature Conservancy's volunteer Africa council.   He makes the point that we are wasting our time if we try to change thousands of years of TCM culture. We are also wasting our time if we target the heart of the rhino horn user by appealing to a sort of inner "love" of rhinos. The real approach, he suggests, is to get at the brain of the users by telling them that they are being scammed or "defrauded by rumor-mongering criminals and others on the take.'" His key paragraph starts like this:

This is the message that needs to circulate in Asia. "You are being conned! Who do you think is spreading the cancer cure rumour? It's the rhino horn dealers! Such a rumour is slap in the face to TCM, a 3,000 year old art of healing.

Another way of putting this is that buyers are being sold useless goods by what used to be called snake oil salesmen. They were vilified and run out of town by the (usually) white-hatted sheriff in many a spaghetti western. Let’s get that vilification onto the television, radio and print media in Vietnam, where the cancer cure nonsense seems to be strongest.

In another highly relevant article in the same issue, Esmond Martin and Lucy Vigne have a piece titled Strategies To Decrease Rhino Poaching In Africa: Our Personal View. These two have tracked and followed the rhino and ivory story for three decades. They provide a comprehensive figure of rhino poaching, covering the period 2007 to 2011, of at least 1370 animals. Add the 2012 figures and we are two thousand and counting!

In their article Martin and Vigne compare the protection of rhino in the Indian sub-continent with the apparent failures in some parts of Africa.

The bottom line is that where the poaching is less rampant there is a more coordinated effort by government. Villagers on the fringes of the Indian parks are helped with all sorts of agricultural enterprises and far more money is spent per km² than in Africa. In a couple of parks there are two field staff per square kilometre. Of course this leads to far more buy-in by villagers and if poachers are arrested and tried the local judiciary “usually gives sentences of several years in prison that act as an adequate deterrent.”

In a few African countries (Namibia, Swaziland) there has been much less poaching, which can probably be ascribed to much lower human densities than in South Africa as well as lower rhino numbers, stiff sentences for those found guilty,  and greater buy-in by local communities. One of the problems that plagues the Kruger efforts is the huge size of the park (at 20,000 km² it is about the same area as Wales or about four times the size of Prince Edward Island) and the much lower density of staff (one person per 33 km²). On top of that there is a more-or-less open border with Mozambique all along the eastern boundary of the park. As Martin and Vigne report “There have been a number of arrests of poachers, but overall intelligence and cooperation with official across the border has been inadequate, and Mozambique’s penalties for wildlife crimes are ineffectual.”

It's an interesting read, accompanied by several telling pictures, including ones of fake rhino horns for sale in China.

Rhino poaching - a personal account

I wanted to post a pdf document about a very personal account of the poaching and mutilaiton of a single white rhino named Geza. It was written by veterinarian Dr. William Fowlds in South Africa.

Unfortunately it does not seem possible to attach a pdf of his moving account to this blog. If you'd like to read this sad story let me know your email address and I will send it to you. However it is pretty grim and has some horrible pictures of Geza, still alive but terribly mutilated, so be warned!

I could not even load the very short YouTube video that is embedded in the story, but here is the URL


All beacause some misguided people in China or another oriental country think that rhino horn is some sort of medicinal cure-all. The latest nonsense that came out of Vietnam is that it is a cure for cancer. 

I have posted in this subejct before, but make no apologies for doing so again. My second ever wildlife case was a white rhino in Meru National Park, Kenya and I have had  soft spot for rhino ever since. I have several previous posts on the subject and you can find them by looking on my index.

More on Rhino Horn and Poaching

My blog of Nov 29 about rhino poaching was written before I went with my family to Kenya. While there, and since I got back, more disturbing news has been reported.

The use of rhino horn as part of Traditional Chinese Medicine is ancient, nobody knows how ancient, and as I have blogged before the situation continues to be a nightmare for conservationists. I used one example of many in The Trouble With Lions when I quoted Judy Mills who, in a TRAFFIC report found that 60 percent of South Korea’s doctors believe that rhino horn is an effective medicine and 79 percent believe it to be essential for a wide variety of ailments.

Yet another South-East Asian country seems to have joined the “hunt” for rhino in South Africa. For some reason the finger-nail-like substance has gained an entirely false reputation as a cure for cancer. Vietnamese hunters, have arrived in South Africa and in one report titled mules hunting rhino -check it out- are seen to be active, with a video report by Dan Rather even appearing on the planetsave.com website.

Recent African twists in the ugly saga come from three countries. First, two places in Kenya, where Mugie Ranch, on the Laikipia plains west of Mount Kenya have given up their attempts to keep black rhino because of the steady decline of their original number of about 30 head as poachers took them out one at a time. The Kenya Wildlife Service moved in a translocated them all (apart from the one they lost during the drugging). In some ways sadder was the poaching of a single hand-raised rhino at Sweetwaters Conservancy. I last saw him three years ago when I could scratch his neck as he contentedly chewed on a stick of sugar cane. Now some callous sod has taken him out.

Are these two still there? - I took the photo in South Africa about 15 years ago.

Then there is Namibia, where officials in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, and where has been apparently granted a Vietnamese man a hunting permit for the trophy hunt of a rhino on the Otjiwa Safari Lodge.

The same article in the Namibian Sun quoted the Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism, Uahekua Herunga, as saying that the government should also look into “legalizing” a trade in rhino horn. Presumably he is suggesting some sort of “farming” for horn. What next?

In many ways more chilling than either of the things going in these two countries is the news from South Africa. I have mentioned before that one of my former students told me about two vets who have been implicated in poaching. Now I’ve learned more about them. In an article published on line they are named as Karel Toet and Manie du Plessis (and their wives) They are suspected of involvement with a rhino horn syndicate headed by Out of Africa Adventurous Safari’s Dawie Groenewald. The veterinarians (and other “Groenewald gang” members) will face charges of assault, fraud, corruption, malicious damage to property, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, and contravention of the National Environmental Biodiversity Act when they return to court in April 2012.

If you think that is bad news and a slap in the face for wildlife vets, there is more. One of South Africa’s most prominent wildlife vets is Dr. Douw Grobler. He is a former head of the game capture unit in the Kruger National Park and was arraigned in Pretoria North Magistrates Court. No charges were laid but he is suspected of supplying veterinary drugs to a controversial game farmer and hunter named Hugo Ras, who has several previous convitions related to nature conservation transgressions and was arrested last August.

The case was postponed to February 28th and Grobler was released on R5,000 (USD $618) bail. You can read the full story here.

Of course Grobler may have been falsely accused, but the picture is not pretty and certainly puts all wildlife vets in Africa under a spotlight.

Rhino poaching

More on rhino horn and the poaching issue

Last week we stopped over with an old friend and veterinary colleague who has worked in South Africa. We were amazed to hear that she had done a one-week locum in a veterinary practice when the principals had needed a stand-in because they were in the process of exporting 13 white rhino to China. She was horrified to learn that they were doing no such thing and had been caught in the act of darting and dehorning rhino. One of them committed suicide soon after his arrest. Apparently they were part of a large gang who have been involved in the rhino poaching “business” for quite some time and were somehow linked to the Thai man, Chumlong Lemtongthai who is in custody in South Africa. At his arrest the Thai kingpin reportedly had an outstanding order for 50 horns. That demand is still there. He was due to return to court yesterday for a further bail hearing, but I cannot find anything new on this matter. I have alreadv posted once about this and the original story appeared on the BBC wesbite

The latest figures (October 30th this year) are that over 600 rhino have been killed in South Africa in the last two years, just for their horns. The killing, which has been going on for centuries, had declined somewhat and an average of “only” 36 rhinos were poached in the five years up to 2005.

These two were slaughtered in Pilansberg NP and the stark photo was taken by Steve Dell, who is a field ecologist in the park.


A truly ugly new component is reported by Declan Hofmeyr of Madikwe Game Reserve, which lies on the extreme west of South Africa, close to the border with Botswana. During a recent arrest in the Kruger a Chinese hand grenade was seized from one of the poachers. That is bad enough, but it seems as if carcasses are also being booby trapped with Chinese munitions as a revenge tactic against rangers who killed some poachers last year.

The myth persists in many countries of the orient that rhino horn is the essential ingredient for many medical purposes. The most recent claim seems to be that is it a cure-all for cancer. If that is the case, why not harvest finger-nails from beauty salons, because the stuff is of the same make-up. Trouble is, rhino horn fetches about $35,000 US dollars per kg on the Oriental market. That’s a lot of incentive for the poachers.

The perpetrators are not only using simple old techniques of shooting with rifles, but have gone into the use of helicopters, night vision goggles and darting. It is not just South Africa. A few rhino have been poached in Kenya and no doubt other countries are being targeted. There was even a recent case in Tanzania in which a ranger was shot at with a poison-tipped arrow. His jacket saved him as the deadly Acokanthera poison, for which there is no antidote, failed to enter his blood stream.

Such is the demand for rhino horn that museums in the UK are being raided and horns from mounted specimens have been stolen. In a recent report one gang lost out when they stole what were actually latex horns from an exhibit.

The whole issue is clouded by other factors. It has long been known that the only way rhino can be protected is in heavily guarded refugia. High profile reserves like the Kruger National Park are employing military forces to guard their rhino, as are some of the private preserves in Kenya. They can afford to, but smaller operators are in a bind.

Another South African correspondent wrote to me just a couple of days ago. He has been intimately involved with the commercial game ranching industry in South Africa for many years, and understands that in the Africa of today’s world, wildlife has to pay its way. This is part of his email:

"The current rhino poaching and the moratorium on export/trade in the horn just illustrates the fact “that if it pays it stays”. Rhino horn is after all a renewable product and can be cropped I think every three years. What is now happening is that Game ranchers cannot afford the cost of protection as they cannot realise any income , the price of rhino’s has fallen and there will be fewer kept. The situation currently is though that the population growth is still exceeding the poaching rate."

There seem to be two separate movements on this subject. One is an attempt get a total ban on all rhino horn (and elephant tusk) trading world-wide. This has been spearheaded out of Kenya and the folks who started the petition are seeking a million signatures. If you feel this is an option, then got to this site.

The other idea, which has been touted before, is summarized in an online BBC article of Oct 30th this year by Pumza Fihlani titled Could legalising rhino horn trade stop poaching?

She states that “Some game farms in South Africa have resorted to de-horning rhinos before poachers get to them.” She may not know that this has been tried before, mainly in Zimbabwe. It failed. The poachers went ahead and killed rhino anyway.

A bulleted box derived from WWF and Campfire Zimbabwe data on that same BBC site gives one a picture
• 80% Africa's rhino population is found in southern Africa
• There are 4,500 black rhino in southern Africa
• The black rhino population has decreased by 95% since the 1980s
• There are 20,000 white rhino in South Africa alone
• About 80% of Africa's rhinos are found on state-owned land and the rest on private property.

According to Fihlani “South Africa has commissioned a study into whether legalising trade in rhino horn could in fact help to bring down poaching, the Department of Environmental Affairs announced recently.”

She correctly goes on to say that while many countries are desperate for answers to the poaching problem - and many agree that a lot more can be done to save rhinos, critics says South Africa's idea might be too unconventional and untested to get the supports it needs.

There were plenty of comments on Fihlani‘s page, with ideas like contaminating horns to make them undesirable in the TCM trade, shooting poachers on sight, harvesting horns every three years and genetic modification of rhino to be hornless among them.

On a final note, some artificial insemination trials have started and moderate success has been achieved. It is exciting from the scientific point of view, but will never really impact overall rhino populations.

Meanwhile, I’m off with family to visit old stamping grounds in Kenya and hope to see lots of rhino and other species in the private game preserves of Solio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solio_Ranch) which was Kenya’s first private game reserve, and into which I moved quite a number of rhino on the 1970s. I wrote about it in my book The Trouble With Lions. Let’s hope we see sights like these. The older female of these two rhino was one of the last ones I worked on before we came to Canada

We also plan to visit Ol Pejetaas well as the Masai Mara. It will be fun to show my grand daughters where their mother was born and what it is about Africa that is so compelling. I will not have a computer with me, so no blogs until just before Christmas.

Rhino poaching

Linkhttp://www.traffic.org/
It seems as if rhino poaching is on the upswing again, and has taken a new twist. Two separate reports from colleagues in South Africa relate how poachers, thought to be Asians, are using helicopters to poach rhino in both national and private game parks. Two white rhino were recently shot from the air in Madikwe, where I worked in 1997 and a black rhino was recently found, minus its horns, in Pilansberg. In this case .303 bullet casings were found at the scene and a helicopter was spotted by an alert ranger. When it was searched upon landing at a local airport nothing was found. It is not too hard to imagine that dumping of horns and munitions could have been readily done on the way to the landing site for later retrieval. GPS has it uses.

As I wrote in The Trouble WIth Lions rhino poaching for horn has been going on a long time, and at one time, a hundred years or so ago, armed gangs were sent out to collect them in droves.

It is difficult to imagine how this trade will cease mainly because of the insatiable desire for rhino horn in Yemen and the Orient. Here is what I wrote about the traditional medicine beliefs and trade in the latter:

Two detailed reports from the early 1990s that were prepared for the Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (more easily known as TRAFFIC) show how rhino horn is both used and sold in Korea and Taiwan. In 1993 author Judy Mills found that 60% of South Korea’s doctors believe that horn is an effective medicine and 79% believe it to be essential for a wide variety of ailments. In Taiwan Kristin Nowell and her colleagues, both of whom were locals who could conduct interviews as “patients” or “consumers” and thus obtain information unbiased by the doctors' or dealers'concerns about detection of potentially illegal activities reported that the medical community recognizes differences between rhino horn from Asia, and that from Africa. The former is about ten times as expensive, averaging over $60,000 per kilogram. They estimated that at least 10,000 kg of rhino horn were held in the thousands of licensed and unlicensed pharmacies during their study. Almost all of this was from African rhinos, and the total retail value, in 1992 was in excess of US$70 million. The most expensive items, far in excess of unprocessed Asian horn, were the antique carvings, becoming ever more valuable as pressure is brought to bear against the use or ownership of rhino horn for any purpose at all.

If rhino horn was that valuable in the 1990s, I cannot even guess what is is now worth if poachers are using helicopters. Depending on the machine helicopter time comes in at around $1000 per hour, and then there is the little matter of purchase price and the need for highly trained pilots.