231 rhinos killed for their horns so far this year

The reality is that there will continue to be a battle against rhino poaching in South Africa, Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said on Tuesday.

She was speaking at a briefing on the progress of efforts to combat rhino poaching, saying two things give her “strength to carry on”.

“One is that there is a steady decline in the statistics. The other is that there are consequences being meted out to those who were involved in the illegal trade and we are managing to intercept the trade at higher levels in the value chain.”

This suggests the integrated strategy looking at breaking the chain of wildlife trafficking, which was approved by the cabinet in May, was working. 

“Is there a magic silver bullet? No, there isn’t but I think that consistency, perseverance and determination are what yield results in this battle.”

Creecy released the latest rhino poaching statistics, which showed that in the first six months of this year, 231 rhinos were killed. These figures represent an 11% decrease — or a decline of 28 animals killed for their horn — compared with the same period last year.

The first six months of 2023 have continued to show that poaching is shifting away from the Kruger National Park, where 42 rhinos were poached, to provincial and private reserves. In KwaZulu-Natal, where 143 were killed during this period. In total, 46 of the rhino killed were in privately-owned reserves and 143 in provincially-owned reserves.

Hluhluwe/iMfolozi hotspots

Rhino poachers have continued to target the Hluhluwe/iMfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal where Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, supported by the department and iSimangaliso Wetland Park, implements measures to combat rhino poaching. 

Among these has been the establishment of a tactical operations joint control centre, which facilitates police deployments to Hluhluwe/iMfolozi Park. The department made R40 million available to repair and replace the boundary fence around the park. 

“This will not only help us in preventing rhino poaching but it will also assist in preventing the escape of wild animals, in particular lions, into the surrounding community,” Creecy said.

Her department is in discussions with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife on dehorning rhinos and on providing financial support for this. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), meanwhile, has designated a prosecutor to facilitate rhino cases in KwaZulu-Natal, which would help to prioritise cases to be expedited through court processes. 

Creecy said it was well known that Kruger’s rhino population had been “severely battered” after nearly 20 years of poaching. “So, this is why one can see a displacement to other areas … and we are particularly concerned about what’s going on at Hluhluwe/iMfolozi [where] almost every single day this year, a rhino has been killed.”

She said the department was also concerned about rhino poaching shifting to private reserves, adding that there was “excellent collaboration with the majority of private reserves through our [Environmental Enforcement] Fusion Centre”.

Collaboration key

In May, the cabinet approved the National Integrated Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking, which Creecy described as an important development in strengthening the collaboration between role players to effectively address the organised nature of rhino poaching and wildlife trafficking.

She said collaboration between law enforcement agencies, including the police, the Green Scorpions, customs officials, the Financial Intelligence Centre and the NPA, remains a key strategy. These efforts are supported by private security in privately-owned conservation areas.

“This strategy aims to break the illicit value chain of wildlife trafficking in our country and beyond its borders,” she said. 

Although the focus is on rhino, the strategy aims to address the illegal trade and poaching of other species that are threatened and trafficked such as abalone and pangolins.

In the first six months of this year, collaboration with the police and the NPA led to the conviction of 31 offenders, with most of the sentences being custodial sentences, Creecy said. In Skukuza, for example, one suspect found guilty of killing three rhinos and in possession of weapons and ammunition was sentenced to an effective 32 years imprisonment. 

‘Holistic’ ranger services, polygraph testing

In response to a range of studies that point out collusion between ranger services and criminal syndicates, Creecy said Kruger park has developed a holistic ranger services integrity management plan. It aims to improve ranger morale and resilience to corruption by providing services that enhance ranger health and well-being, provide training and counselling, offer a range of financial management services and debt management. 

“The reason we’ve done this is … we have found that in instances where rangers themselves have financial difficulties and have debt, they are more vulnerable firstly to mashonisas [loan sharks], and then of course, to the actual syndicates themselves. We are aiming to address the root of this problem.”

SANParks has established an integrity testing system — a polygraph policy — for new employees and to support anti-corruption investigations where collaboration with criminals is suspected. Voluntary testing is also offered, for instance in disciplinary processes or when employees think their colleagues doubt their integrity. 

Creecy said integrity or polygraph testing could not be made compulsory overnight because it’s a change in conditions of employment. 

“With new recruits, everybody will be polygraph-tested when they come in and it will be part of their terms and conditions that they can be polygraph-tested in the future,” she said. “What we are trying to reach is an agreement with organised labour with regard to everybody who is currently in the service and those negotiations have been going on for some time.” 

Shift in militaristic culture

Creecy said the fundamental issue is a shift in the culture of ranger services. “Any force has a militaristic culture, and that obviously is necessary because in areas where there might be direct engagement with a suspect, you don’t want a situation where we start debating with commanders about what the appropriate course of action will be.” 

But a militaristic culture also has unintended consequences, where sometimes people are not adequately taken care of. 

“And what we have found is in situations where you improve ranger housing, where proper counselling is provided to rangers and their families — obviously rangers, like anybody else involved in violent encounters, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder — where there is engagement with rangers around financial situations, where rangers feel that they are an integral part of the system and there are possibilities for promotion and career development, all of these issues tend to improve morale and loyalty.”

There is a recognition that the reliance solely on militaristic culture “is not good for the rangers and it’s not good for the organisation”, Creecy said. “This is the kind of culture that we’re trying to change so that we get better outcomes and better cooperation with regard to our conservation mandate.”