The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho is considering a new strategy to curb rising farm livestock theft costing millions of dollars — tracking and identifying animals through microchips implanted under their skin.
The country, totally surrounded by South Africa, is one of the world’s poorest, and the majority of its 2,2-million population depend on subsistence farming to make a living.
The farmers are however being plagued by a steep rise in livestock theft. Between 1996 and 1999, the total value of stolen livestock in Lesotho stood at around R47-million.
The following year, from 1999 to 2000, the amount increased dramatically, with the value of stolen livestock in that year alone standing at R56-million.
Livestock provides a significant proportion of rural income, but the incidence of stock theft has become an increasing problem, especially on the border with South Africa’s Free State province where farming is one of the largest sources of revenue.
There are few fences between South Africa and Lesotho, with the sub-continent’s highest mountain range, the Drakensberg, forming a natural border in the east and the Caledon River flanking the tiny kingdom in the west.
The mountainous terrain often makes it easy for rustlers to hide stolen stock — and difficult for police units to track them. Free State farmers in areas bordering Lesotho lost almost 50 000 animals to stock theft from September 2000 to September 2001.
”The statistics of stock theft are quite frightening coupled with figures of the associated crimes of robbery, assault and murder,” said Lesotho national police commissioner Jonas Malewa.
Stolen livestock includes cattle, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats. Malewa has now recommended the use of the modern microchip computer technology to farmers, to replace the ”archaic method of earmarking, branding and tattooing” in use since British colonial rule in the 19th century.
Cattle rustlers easily erase the branding and tattoo marks with red hot metal and acid. The stock thieves also cut off stolen animals’ ears if they bear the owner’s identification marks, Malewa said.
”The Lesotho police service, the frontline body in the fight against stock theft, is convinced that the microchip system is the only applicable system capable of responding positively to the long-standing problem of identification of livestock,” he said.
Microchips are tiny electronic devices, about the size of a grain of rice, which could be stored in a capsule and implanted near the animal’s tail to make it easy to identify and trace lost or stolen animals.
Although it is more expensive than the traditional methods, it would be cost-effective in the long run, Malewa said. Branding costs R11 per animal, while a microchip costs R35.
Malewa said only about twenty percent of livestock recovered by the police were identifiable. The Lesotho police recovered hundreds of stolen or stray animals in a recent anti-stocktheft drive across the country, but few animals could be returned to their legitimate owners since their provenance could not be identified.
”The extreme and often hazardous efforts undertaken by the police in their endeavour to recover stolen animals was of no use if such animals could be hardly identified and returned to their lawful owners,” Malewa said. – Sapa-AFP