A new expression has entered the South Africa lexicon: khaki-collar crime.
The phrase has been coined to describe the involvement of game park staff, game capture experts and wildlife vets in the lucrative crime of rhino poaching.
In an ironic twist, some of those drawn to work in wildlife conservation have now become destroyers, using scheduled immobilising drugs, sophisticated dart guns, night-vision equipment and helicopters to kill rhino for their horn – nothing more than a bunch of compressed hair but worth its weight in gold to those who believe in its mythical medicinal qualities.
Jo Shaw, an ecologist at the Endangered Wildlife Trust in Johannesburg, found this week’s attack on two rhino at Fairy Glen Game Farm near Worcester particularly chilling because the Western Cape had not yet been targeted by rhino poachers, and because the drug M99 was used to immobilise the two animals before their horns were hacked off.
“M99 is a restricted drug available to people within the industry … There is definitely rot within the industry, and vets have been charged … It’s not just someone who lives near the reserve and snuck in. Indications are these people have know-how,” Shaw said.
The condition of the male Fairy Glen rhino had improved yesterday, while the female remained critical.
Last year two vets from Nylstroom, Karel Toet and Manie du Plessis, were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a rhino-poaching ring. Douw Grobler, one of the country’s top wildlife vets and a game-capture expert, was arrested a few weeks ago for allegedly distributing M99 illegally. The case has been postponed.
“They’re using drugs not because it’s humane but it’s quieter. In Limpopo and North West, unmarked helicopters have been involved. We imagine they take the horn away in the helicopters and get it out of the country somewhere,” said Shaw. “Most of the rhino poaching this year has been in Kruger Park, where they come across the Mozambique border. A number of Vietnamese citizens have been caught with horn, and 33 horns were seized in a container in Hong Kong. Indications are that the demand comes from Vietnam.”
Shaw said there was a rumour that a powerful Vietnamese government minister claimed to have been cured of cancer after taking rhino horn, sparking a surge in demand in that country.
However, while rhino horn has been used medicinally in China for thousands of years, chiefly to reduce fever, it has no proven medicinal properties. More recently, the horn was being sold as a “detoxicant”.
“It’s being used by high-flying people in Vietnam in the belief that it clears the cells and body of toxins. Whether this is being used as a marketing ploy, I don’t know, but it is being prescribed by certain doctors in Vietnam.”
Although international trade in rhino horn is banned, street markets in Vietnam openly sell rhino-horn bowls, designed with serrations on the inside for grinding the horn before it is mixed with water and drunk.
Paul Gildenhuys of CapeNature, who is the Western Cape representative on the National Wildlife Crime Reaction Unit, said southern Africa was being targeted as home to 90 percent of the remaining rhino. “The rest have been wiped out,” he said.
“The rhino trade is all linked in some way to organised crime … you’ll never stop it because of the money involved,” Grobler said.
So far, 431 rhinos have been killed this year. Last year’s number was 333. In 2009 the total was 122. - Cape Times