Translocating Kruger's rhinos

A red dirt path cuts through the savannah of the Black Rhino Game Reserve in South Africa’s Pilanesberg National Park. Michael Joubert, co-owner of the reserve, bumps along in the back of an open air safari truck and points across a wide expanse of knee-high dried grass towards the anti-poaching unit charged with protecting the conservation land’s rhinos.

“Right on that hill about half a kilometer in front of us on the right, that’s usually where they are stationed,” he says. “They always try to find the highest place in the reserve and then they’ll change their patrol tracks because they don’t want any kind of routine because then it can be learned.”

The anti-poaching units are similar to military personnel and the job is just as dangerous. The poachers that illegally enter the park to kill rhinos come equipped with serious weapons. “They’ve got snipers and ak47,” he says. “They have weapons that can’t match what the anti-poaching guys have. It’s almost like an unprotected war zone.”

Demand for rhino horn from wealthy consumers in Asia has pushed the population of African rhinos to the brink of extinction. There are only 25,000 African rhinos left in the world today - roughly 85 percent of them live in South Africa.

Black Rhino Game Reserve lost three rhinos to poaching this year, all of them within 100 meters of the road. It’s a dangerous place for rhinos and the people protecting them but it’s still far safer than the country’s largest game reserve, Kruger National Park.

Roughly 530 kilometers east of Pilanesberg, Kruger is home to more than 8,000 rhinos, the single largest population in the world. But the park is losing them at an unsustainable rate - between one and two a day are killed by poachers.

Howard Hendricks from the South African National Parks Conservation Services says the park is now trying to sell off some of its rhinos to places like Black Rhino Game Reserve in the hope that they might find safer sanctuary. “Our translocation program is aimed at translocating rhinos from hotspots - poaching hotspots - to areas of high levels of security.”

Kruger Park is a poaching hotspot for several reasons. First, it’s huge - more than 19,000 square kilometers, about the size of the country of Wales, and difficult to manage. An even bigger problem though is the long porous border Kruger shares with neighboring Mozambique.

Until recently, the penalty for poaching in Mozambique was a small fine that rarely got paid. As a result, roughly 80 to 90 percent of poachers in Kruger Park are from Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world.

Howard Hedricks says, “poaching takes advantage of the high level of poverty around Kruger. Poaching is a problem simply because there’s high monetary values involved. If someone is poor then obviously it’s an easy access to money.”

By some estimates rhino horn is worth more than 1 million rand, or $90,000 per kilo - although it’s difficult to confirm that figure. It’s the black market after all, and conservation groups don’t like to advertise the value of rhino horn, fearing it will spur more interest in poaching. In any case, poaching is a high-stakes multi-billion dollar industry.

“Per kilo it’s worth more than cocaine gold, platinum, anything like that,” says Michael Joubert from Black Rhino Game Reserve. “It’s run professionally by crime organizations, similar to a drug cartel.”

Earlier this year a ranger and two staff at Kruger Park were arrested for rhino poaching - one rhino horn could be worth nearly a lifetime in wages for them. Joubert says, “the heartbreaking reality is they aren’t paid well at all. Just as police and law enforcement and teachers these jobs that should have high paying salary the truth is they don’t.”

It’s a dangerous, poorly paid job. The only hope is to hire guards that genuinely care about the animals and feel passionate about protecting them.

To make rhinos less attractive to poachers park staff have considered removing the horns, the only monetarily valuable part of the animals. Horns can be humanely removed without hurting the rhinos, much like cutting your fingernails. But the thickest, widest part of the horn is embedded in the rhino’s skull. And, Joubert says, poachers want to make as much money from each horn as they possibly can.

“They want every gram of the horn. They’ll actually saw into the skull. So, they don’t kill the rhino beforehand. They tranquilize them first so the rhino goes to sleep and eventually wakes up traumatized because it’s got this massive hole in its skull and then it actually bleeds to death. So it’s just so sad.”

Scientists worry that the number of rhinos being killed will soon exceed the number being born, threatening the species with extinction in the wild in the coming decades. But Jo Shaw, manager of the rhino program for World Wildlife Fund in South Africa, says the sale and translocation of rhinos being proposed has a proven track record for protecting the animals.

“At the turn of the 19th century there were only maybe 50 Southern White Rhinos left in the world in just one park in South Africa. It was the movement of these animals to new areas like Kruger Park that grew the numbers that we see today.”

Kruger Park officials are still working out the details of their translocation sale but observers like Jo Shaw at World Wildlife Fund are hopeful that moving some rhinos from poaching hot spots will be a step in the right direction towards saving one of Africa’s most iconic species.