Johannesburg - In the war against rhino poachers, Major General Johan Jooste fears losing one of his most important battles: keeping up the sagging morale of the exhausted rangers of the Kruger National Park.
His force of hundreds of rangers and soldiers were on the front line as South Africa recorded its worst year for rhino poaching in recent decades, with over 1 000 of the animals slain last year, more than 600 in the Kruger alone.
Every day was a crime scene, a running battle with ever-daring poaching gangs.
That hasnât changed.
âThere is a feeling of not getting the job done. That weâre failing,â says Jooste. âBut itâs up to us as a country â all donors, state departments, conservationists and the public â to back up our rangers.
âWeâre saying letâs match the input of the rangers. The pure sacrifice, hardship, the dangers they live with, the threats on their lives. We had 55 firefights last year. Even in the days of the war, that is rare. Every day, there are murders. What goes with that? The impacts on their families, the spotlight on them in police investigations.â
It is a year since Jooste came in from retirement to command the anti-poaching unit in the Kruger. At his age, 61, itâs âabout making a differenceâ. He has experience and âsome wisdomâ on his side.
âUnfortunately, the days without a casualty or carcass are few and far between. This place (the Kruger) gives new meaning to 24/7. My wife and I visited all the ranger stations over Christmas.
âJa, you meet a few guys. But for most of them there was no Christmas. It was just another day. We could send a few on leave. So it goes on weekends, day in and day out.â
For Jooste, there are small victories. The projections were that 750 rhino would fall in the Kruger last year, but the final toll was 606. âWe didnât bring numbers down ultimately, but at least the gradient of that graph is more favourable, but the number (of killings) is still going up.â
The carnage continues with more than 20 rhinos slaughtered this year.
Jooste dreams of converting Krugerâs rangers into an anti-poaching force to be reckoned with, the best in Africa. But this will take time.
âWe have two to three armed incursions a day on average. You donât just take people and make them a paramilitary force. Itâs a three-year programme. The tracking skills take long to build, the other skills in terms of almost counter-insurgency operations you have to teach the people. We have to improve our reaction capability from the air.
âWe want ultimately to have more successes outside the park than in. Once poachers are inside the park, itâs too late⊠The ultimate victory of this war wonât be determined in the bush, but in the boardroom, in the courtroom.
With most poachers coming from Mozambique, the country needs to rein in the slaughter.
âWe have to have police take out the syndicates, weâve got to be more proactive and have intelligence stepped up outside the park. We are doctoring our symptoms. Poachers â thereâs thousands of them waiting to poach. Itâs a low-risk crime that pays well.â
The demand for rhino horn to feed black markets in China and Vietnam, where it is used as a status symbol and for its âmedicinalâ properties, is surging. For South Africaâs rhino, itâs an unfolding disaster. Consider that in 2007, 13 rhino were killed.
Populations of white rhinos are dangerously close to reaching that tipping point âbetween this year and 2016â where at the current rate of poaching, deaths of rhinos may outstrip births for the first time, warns Dr Mike Knight, the chairman of the International Union for the Conservation of Natureâs African Rhino Specialist Group.
âI struggle to sleep thinking about it,â he reveals. âThe last thing I want to be doing is seeing the demise of rhinos on my watch. The scary thing is the escalation and why it has come about; primarily because of transnational organised crime.
âBut weâre not seeing the Presidency stand up and say this is not only wildlife crime â itâs economic sabotage. Any government should be quivering in its boots.â
Itâs an âerrorâ to believe that the Department of Environmental Affairs can solve the crisis alone. âWe need greater co-ordination and co-operation between key government departments, such as Safety and Security, Environmental Affairs, Sars, Customs, the NPA and Ports Authority, which is on paper in some places, but not working efficiently.
âWeâre not making sure that they are talking to each other and sharing information. Silos do not necessarily make good bread. We have to look at demand reduction (in consumer countries). Weâre not getting the information in there fast enough. And we need a form of regulated trade in horn, but the devil is in the details.â
Increasingly, public interest in the plight of the rhino, is fading, he believes: âtwo years ago rhino poaching was the buzz of the month. Itâs almost like the government and the public have become immune. Now, people say, âag, itâs just like the rapes, murdersâ. People become insensitive. The key is having dedicated people focused on sharing a single goal, to break organised crime.â
Have patience, says Hawks spokesman Colonel Johan Jooste (no relation to the major general).
âWeâve got all the structures in place. Look, thereâs always room for improvement with regards to better co-operation and better intelligence. This is rhino crime, but there are also other crimes that need priority attention.
âI think the resources allocated to rhino poaching are reaching their limits, but hopefully with everyoneâs personal commitment, we can make a difference. If you look at last yearâs convictions, or at how people got fines as penalties in 2008, now they get 6 to 10 years in jail. Thatâs excellent. Weâve also laid down the foundation for better international co-operation between receiving, and supply countries.â
The Department of Environmental Affairs has its own wishlist for this year: the increased involvement of communities, emphasis on cross- border collaboration; âenhancing actionable intelligenceâ to enable South Africa to disrupt transnational criminal networks; increasing the conviction rate; converting the present ranger corporations to be the best anti-poaching network and strategic demand reduction initiatives.
It will work this year to understand âmechanisms towards the legal trade in rhino hornâ to convince the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 2016 to flood the black market with its stock-piled horn.
The department plans to sign memorandums of understanding with Laos, Thailand and Hong Kong this year and with Mozambique later this month.
âThese agreements are a good first step but we really need to see action right now,â Dr Jo Shaw, the manager of the rhino programme at WWF-SA (World Wide Fund for Nature) points out. âI think there is growing recognition that what we are dealing with here is transnational syndicated organised crime.
âItâs a new challenge for conservation⊠We are learning to fight smarter and musnât give up. What we need to see is a more co-ordinated international approach that focuses on disrupting these syndicates.â
WWF, she says, will start implementing its behaviour change campaigns against rhino horn consumption in countries such as Vietnam this year. It canât come soon enough.
âWeâre getting closer to reaching that tipping point where the deaths of rhino start to exceed the births. This year, may be the year that happens, or it could be the year we start to see a reduction in poaching⊠SA has brought rhino back from the brink before. We can do it again.â
For Jooste (of SANParks), South Africa will only overcome the onslaught âwhen we treat our rhino like goldâ.
âRight now, rhino horn is the most expensive commodity gram for gram on the planet. Who could have foreseen this demand, five years ago? That 1 000 rhino would be killed?
âThe final test will only be numbers coming down. No one is impressed with us right now. This is a relentless scoreboard that is watched nationally and internationally. There is no remarks column.â
Is one black rhino expendable as a âtrophyâ?
Sheree Bega
When youâre trying to save a critically endangered species like the black rhino from extinction, every animal counts, right? Not always. And thatâs why there was nothing wrong with the controversial hunting permit auctioned by a Texan safari club last weekend, say some conservationists.
âNowadays, people tend not to like hunting,â explains Dr Jacques Flamand, who heads up the WWF/Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, âand thereâs this apparent contradiction between having an endangered species on the one hand and hunting it on the other. But the money from that hunt goes back to the landowner, to conservation and communities.â
But that viewpoint has done nothing to stop the outcry over the Dallas Safari Clubâs hunting permit auction to shoot an old male â with a $350 000 (R3.8m) price tag on its head â in Namibia. There have even been death threats from some animal activists to the clubâs operators.
The rhino auctioned off by the Texan club was one of five black rhinos Namibia has permission from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to allow to be trophy hunted.
âPeople also need to understand there is a legal international framework for this hunt. South Africa also has the same permits but very rarely uses all of its permits up â maybe one black rhino is hunted here a year,â explains Flamand.
âYes, black rhinos are critically endangered and we want their numbers to increase. But there are still animals that are superfluous to the population â they may be old, kicked out of their home ranges and havenât got a hope of survival.â
Most surprising to enraged animal groups was that the Dallas Safari Club had the support of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the largest â and oldest â association of conservation scientists. Groups like the IUCN argue, too, that trophy hunts like these benefit conservation.
âWhile it appears counter-intuitive, the removal of the odd surplus male⊠can actually enhance overall metapopulation growth rates and further genetic conservation,â says Dr Mike Knight, the chairman of the IUCNâs African Rhino Specialist Group.
Knight ascribes the outcry to ânaivety from a disjointedâ public in the US and Europe.
âThey donât understand the real world issues of conserving megafaunas here in Africa. For the likes of big animals like rhinos that means space.
âWeâre talking about viable populations that interact with the environment in a natural way and are exposed to natural selection. Particularly in southern Africa, and SA, we agree on sustainable use⊠of wildlife having to pay its way and of the greater beneficiation of dividends of the outputs of wildlife for the national parks that conserve them, the landowners that own the animals and communities.
âHunting is a very important part of the whole sustainable use toolbox. But it must be well regulated and managed.â
For some animal welfare advocates, the bigger issue is the precarious future of rhinos â with nearly a thousand slaughtered in South Africa last year.
âIf Dallas Safari Club were truly interested in the plight of rhinos in southern Africa, they would donate funds to help address the rhino poaching crisis, which has reached a tipping point in South Africa,â says Jason Bell, the director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in southern Africa.
âHunting will not solve the problem⊠This auction tells the world that some Americans will pay anything for the opportunity to kill one of the last of a species. It also sends a dangerous message that these iconic and disappearing animals are worth more as dead trophies to be mounted and hung on a wall in a Texas mansion than living in the wild in Africa.â
Bob Smith, a senior research fellow at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (Dice), University of Kent, disagrees.
âHunting one old male will have no long-term impact on Namibiaâs black rhino population.
âIn an ideal world, all the people who are protesting would send $1 to the Namibian government to support their amazing conservation work. This isnât an ideal world, which is why trophy hunting remains an important source of conservation funds.
âThe general public in Europe and the US incorrectly think that black rhino numbers have collapsed in the last 30 years, confuse trophy hunting with poaching, and assume that shooting one old male rhino could lead to the extinction of the species. The reality is the global population of black rhinos has increased from 2 300 in 1993 to over 5 000 today⊠This is an incredible success story.â - Saturday Star