Cape Town - Beverly and Dereck Joubert have spent their lives documenting Africa’s wildlife wars, but the biggest battles the continent’s animals face is for their existence.
Time is running out. “There is a battle for African wildlife going on right now and it involves three key species that will make or break the future of all wildlife on this continent,” say the wildlife film-makers, who have photographed, researched and explored Africa for more than 30 years.
Consider that elephants are being killed at a rate of five an hour; lions at five a day and rhinos at a rate of one every seven hours. “All three are connected and if we want to preserve large African landscapes we now need to focus on securing the large iconic species. By doing that, a whole lot of things fall into place that eventually trickle down to benefits to all species, and by default we protect pangolins and other critical and endangered species.”
The couple are among a handful of explorers, adventurers and scientists declared National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence around the globe.
For most of their lives, they have “lived and breathed” Africa. Botswana is the home of their new, ambitious Rhinos Without Borders project, a charity that is behind a novel approach to help safeguard South Africa’s rhinos.
In January, the Jouberts will airlift 100 rhinos from South Africa, releasing them in their new home in Botswana – the safest country in Africa for rhino. There, they will be tracked by an anti-poaching team using the latest technology.
Botswana has one of the lowest poaching rates in Africa – largely because of the country’s shoot-to-kill policy.
The last remaining wetland wilderness on the continent, the Okavango Delta is inaccessible to poachers and “we know they’re going to have a high chance of survival and breeding”.
Botswana will not only be a modern-day Noah’s Ark for “rhino genes” but a safe haven for South Africa’s rhino.
Through their Great Plains Conservation, and in partnership with the tourism venture, and Beyond, they plan to airlift the remainder over the next 18 months.
“The flight itself (to Botswana) is a few hours. Driving would be much longer,” says Joubert.
Their mission is urgent.
So far this year poachers have slaughtered more than 900 rhino. “We have already lost 100 more rhinos than this time last year,” he says.
“That is our entire quota for the Rhinos Without Borders project. Scientists are projecting extinctions of wild rhinos in five years, and the numbers show they may be right. An Africa without rhinos will be a substantially different and lesser place.”
Botswana may boast the lowest poaching rates in Africa, however, “unless we stop the trade in ivory and rhino horn and lion bones, poaching all over Africa will increase to a potential point of catastrophic collapse, which is why we need to come up with policies that may seem extreme and unnecessary now, to future- proof against that date.
“Botswana is simply one of the places with good leadership, great political will and resources to keep ahead of it.”
For their project, which is as much “a project of hope as it is about rhinos”, the animals will be drawn from a combination of private landowners and from parks.
“Our objective would be to get them from a few source locations so we can have some genetic variety. Our relationships and support from parks and officials in both countries is fantastic. Everyone wants to save rhinos.”
In South Africa’s relentless war against poachers, more bold action like translocation is required, believes the International Rhino Foundation (IRF).
The government plans to move 500 rhinos out of the hard-hit Kruger National Park to safer areas.
But translocating rhinos is no easy task, the IRF says. “It takes months of meticulous planning. Both the animals and the people must be kept safe and animals of the right age and sex chosen to maximise success.”
Translocating rhinos requires dedicated and skilled teams.
“We were involved in good and bad relocations over the years,” Joubert said. “The bad was after Beverly and I heard the last black rhino in Botswana (had been) shot.
“We then helped find and move the last living rhinos out of the wild into captivity in Botswana. It was against everything I stand for, taking wild animals into captivity, but the ‘safe house’ policy was necessary then.”
Then, in the early 2000s, when poaching had been contained, the Jouberts were part of the relocation of the first 40 rhinos back to the wild.
In South Africa, there is a robust rhino capture and movement industry, says Joubert. “We are simply tapping into the best wildlife management and capture teams in the world.”
The couple salute SANParks for its plan to move high-risk rhinos out of the Kruger.
“It has rhinos that are exposed to poaching and in enough numbers to warrant an extraction of some of them. It makes perfect sense: you diversify your valuable portfolio of high-value assets and distribute them to safeguard against risk but also to diversify genetics as well.”
Last week, the Kruger relocated 20 rhinos as part of its rhino management strategy.
“We cannot stop the rhino from moving into areas where poaching is rife,” explains Professor Gerry Swan, chairman of the SANParks conservation and tourism board. “We released them south of a major river, which we hope will stop them moving north again. Perennial rivers act as natural barriers and can prevent rhino movement.
“In addition, the area where we have released rhinos has good rhino habitat and specifically water and mudwallows abound, a key part of rhino biology, particularly this time of the year.”
This protection zone in Kruger, he explains, has the largest number of rhino in a defined area and boasts increased protection using advanced technology, intense surveillance and security measures.
“These measures facilitate the detection and follow-up operations to apprehend poachers and prevent poaching incidents. However, we will be evaluating the effectiveness of the removal as measured by levels of poaching in areas where rhinos were moved from and whether rhinos (that have been) moved adapt and experience better survival in the areas they were moved too.”
The relocation process has been dogged by controversy, with SANParks initially denying its plans to move rhinos out of the Kruger to safe zones.
“We are evaluating tenders received from prospective buyers of rhino and are considering other national parks with suitable habitats where we can introduce additional rhino,” Swan says.
“This move will require the necessary permits and transport arrangements before we can determine when and how many rhino can be moved safely on any day. Such operations usually require intensive planning and co-ordinating the availability of helicopters.”
Joubert believes South Africa has to achieve two things: reduce reward and increase risk.
“We need more anti-poaching that is more effective closer to the rhinos so that it is extremely difficult for poachers and very high risk.
“In Botswana the military have a shoot-to-kill policy and that increases the risk.”
A legal horn trade would worsen poaching, he feels. “I’m not a fan of trade because it creates value and maintains it. As conservationists we want to see rhino horn and any product from dead animals deemed worthless.”
Joubert recently drew the ire of the hunting fraternity when, commenting on Uganda’s ban on sport hunting in the face of dwindling wildlife, he compared hunting to apartheid and the Holocaust.
Should South Africa, like Botswana, follow suit? Without a doubt, Joubert believes.
“It’s the old King’s Game argument all over again, and one that we now understand does not help protect animals but instead is part of the divide and feeling of disenfranchisement many communities in Africa feel when it comes to wildlife. Later, when we have solved this and have 100 000 rhinos wandering all over South Africa it can be a different debate, but surely right now we should all work together to save the rhinos we do have.”
For the fate of rhinos and Africa’s wildlife and spaces, Joubert is reminded of when New York introduced its broken window policy in the 1980s. “Officials fixed broken windows as they were smashed so that buildings never looked uncared for and abandoned. We are in danger of seeing all wildlife go extinct if we let one major one go, because after rhinos are lost, like smashed windows, something fundamental changes within us, where we will start accepting and even waiting for the next extinction. We have to fix this now.”
Airlifting does not hurt them
Rhinos are typically airlifted by net or transported by truck. But the World Wildlife Fund-SA (WWF-SA) now also transports sedated rhinos by hanging them from their ankles. Does it hurt rhinos to be transported by their feet?
No, says Dr Jacques Flamand, a wildlife vet from the WWF-SA.
“Generally speaking the limbs of an animal are in proportion to its body mass, so be it a mouse, a cat or an elephant, hanging them by four feet is proportionately the same, and the muscles, connective tissue, bones and joints can cope with lifting by that means.
“Anaesthetised elephants are routinely hung by the feet with cranes at capture to move them while sleeping. There is no evidence of any ill effects. All the animals get up and walk normally as soon as they wake up. In our experience, no rhinos have shown any signs of harm.
“They have awoken normally and started eating immediately after release – a sure sign that they are not in distress.”
Australia says yes to import
Ray Dearlove has a bold plan. The South African-born businessman wants South Africa to ship some of its rhinos to Australia to act as an insurance policy to save the threatened animals from extinction.
This is being driven by the booming trade in rhino horn in China and Vietnam.
“The ultimate goal of the Australian Rhino Project is to ensure the survival of these majestic species by making a significant contribution to ex situ conservation breeding efforts to ensure species survival outside the range states where the issue persists,” writes Dearlove, who lives in Australia.
In a newsletter, he says the Australian government has given its “in-principle” approval to import white rhino from South Africa.
“The next step is for the government of South Africa to provide their in-principle support of the export of the rhinos to Australia.”
Albi Modise, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Affairs, told sister paper, the Saturday Star “no application has been received relating to the proposed export of rhino to Australia” as part of this project.
But it is not ruling out Dearlove’s controversial proposal. The government plans to move 500 rhino out of the Kruger, starting from next year, and Modise says these rhinos will be translocated to various strongholds.
Sunday Argus