South Africa Rhinos Under Threat From Poaching

By Alex Crawford, At Kruger National Park, South Africa

Officials at South Africa's National Parks say they are "under siege" from rhino poachers and if the killings go on at the current rate the animal will be extinct within decades.

Despite a range of tactics like deploying the army, mounting helicopter patrols and even using drones in the past few months to try to pinpoint the poachers, the killing of rhinos for their horns is continuing at an alarming rate.

More than 200 rhinos were killed in South Africa in the first three months of this year.

The total for 2013 therefore looks set to top last year's figure, which was a record with more than 600 rhinos being slaughtered. And the 2012 figure was a dramatic increase on the previous year's record of 448.

The worst hit by far is the country's flagship Kruger National Park which shares a long 221-mile (356km) border with Mozambique, from where the vast majority of the poachers come.

Kruger saw more than 70 incursions last month by heavily-armed teams of poachers crossing from Mozambique.

Typically the teams are made up of between two and five hunters who find it very easy to slip across the border illegally.

About 20,000 white rhinos are believed to remain in the wild

They arrive carrying multiple weapons according to SANParks (South African National Parks) officials and can spend up to a week in the park, which is more than two million hectares - roughly the same size as Israel.

Ken Maggs, Chief of Staff of Operation Rhino at Kruger told Sky News: "This is a war we are fighting - against an enemy which has no rules."

He was talking whilst overseeing a training exercise which involved teams of armed rangers in camouflage gear using sniffer dogs to track down the poachers.

"We have very specific rules of engagement and we do not operate a shoot-to-kill policy. We are not allowed to just shoot at a poacher. We have to physically grab him and bring him in for arrest," he said.

The poachers are becoming more sophisticated and audacious - using silencers on their weapons to try to avoid detection and recruiting help from within the park to establish where the rhinos are.

The increase in rhino poaching has been driven by demand from the Far East for rhino horn which is believed to have healing and other properties - and is now more expensive than gold on the black market.

"We want to get the message across that rhino horn is just keratin, like our finger nails," Ranger Andrew Desmet said.

"It has no such qualities at all."

Rangers search the carcasses for bullets to use as evidence

We trekked more than two hours into the bush with one of the Kruger's investigation teams who had been alerted to more dead rhinos. The animals had lain undiscovered in the park for four days.

We saw the vultures first, circling overhead, and then as we approached, we noticed the odour.

"That is the smell of a dead rhino," one of the rangers said.

The two carcasses lay 300m apart. We came across the bones of the calf first, stripped bare by scavengers, its hide left like a folded mat.

It did not take the investigations team long to find the cartridge of a bullet hidden among the bones. It was swiftly bagged. It could be crucial in securing a conviction later. The cartridge will be sent to the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Veterinary Science which is building up a rhino DNA bank which could link the suspects to the dead animals.

Senior investigator Frik Rossouw moved onto the other carcass. This one was virtually intact - apart from a gaping hole where its horn had been.

Again, his colleagues used metal detectors in a circle around the dead animal, then over the animal itself. A beeping noise indicated metal inside the rhino's shoulder.

It took two of the investigations team, using knives to cut through the hide. They found what they were looking for: more evidence - this time a bullet which had remained lodged inside the animal.

"This animal didn't die instantly," Mr Rossouw said.

"The rangers who found them said there were marks indicating the rhino had probably been hit with her calf. She ran for her life before they caught up with her and fired again.

"These poachers just don't care. They want to get out of here as quickly as possible. They know if they get caught, they're in trouble."

The South African judiciary has handed out some tough penalties for rhino poaching recently.

Last year a Thai man was sentenced to a 40-year jail term for overseeing a racket which involved women posing as hunters so he could sell the rhino horn in powder form in the Far East.

SANParks is offering huge rewards, 100,000 South African rand (£7,300), for any information which could lead to the arrest of a poacher and one million rand if you can give police information which could bust a syndicate.

But so far, even the lure of a reward has not done enough to curb the poaching.

"When the sheer numbers keep going up daily, weekly, monthly, sometimes I am not so sure we are winning," special operations ranger Bruce Leslie said.

"It's a lot of pressure on us, our families, everybody involved in this war, but we have to do something and keep going because if we don't, if the world doesn't help, then the rhino will be gone forever."

Donations can be made to help protect rhinos at www.sanparks.org.

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