The KwaZulu-Natal government has announced “drastic preventative measures” to battle rhino poaching which will cost the province R27 million in the 2012/13 financial year.
Tabling his R2.6-billion budget in the provincial legislature on Tuesday, Agriculture and Environmental Affairs MEC Meshack Radebe said rhino poaching in the province and SA had become a major concern.
In this fight, conservation authorities had to face dangerous criminals trained and armed with sophisticated and hi-tech military hardware.
“We need to beef up our security in order to be able to engage with these criminals who want to kill our rhinos.
“We are clearly not prepared to allow these criminals to eradicate our wildlife heritage,” said Radebe.
KZN Wildlife chief executive Bandile Mkhize said 23 rhinos had been killed in the province this year alone.
“Of these, 12 were killed in private game reserves, with 11 in our (provincial) game reserves. The strategy of the poachers has shifted from our game reserves to private ones,” Mkhize said.
Mkhize said KwaZulu-Natal’s population of about 4 000 rhinos was the second-largest in SA after the Kruger National Park, which is estimated to have about 10 000 rhino.
Radebe said his department had developed preventative measures that would also benefit from the total budget of R511.9 million set aside for conservation of biodiversity resources by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.
“A rhino security intervention plan has been designed and adopted.
“The objectives of the plan include developing a proactive strategy to curb rhino poaching through good intelligence, rather than being reactive,” said Radebe.
The plan, he said, would also ensure that staff were adequately trained and empowered to combat the rhino poaching threat.
“It further seeks to ensure that there is co-operation between the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority in all rhino cases.”
To date, Radebe said, the plan had resulted in a 13 percent reduction in rhinos being killed illegally in KwaZulu-Natalcompared with 2010.
Radebe said his department had also acquired the ability to link DNA genetic samples from seized rhino horns to carcasses left in the field.
Some of the measures employed in this fight involved securing helicopter services for law enforcement operations, as well as an ability to infiltrate criminal syndicates through informer networks and intelligence, thus forcing the syndicates to move elsewhere.
The DA’s spokesman on conservation, Radley Keys, urged Radebe to work closely with private game ranches, which were seen by poachers as softer targets than provincial game reserves.