Jamaica Gleaner

Rhino poacher killed by elephant

- JOHANNESBU­RG (AP):

A RHINOCEROS poacher was stomped to death by an elephant and eaten by lions in a South Africa wildlife preserve and rangers found just his skull and trousers, authoritie­s said.

The man and two others were hunting illegally at Kruger National Park last week when the elephant surprised them, park spokesman Isaac Phaahla said. The hunter’s companions dragged his body to a spot near a road and told the man’s family what happened. It took two days for rangers to find his remains.

South Africans weighed in on social media, with many celebratin­g the poacher’s death, calling it justice or applauding the animals for “restoring law and order in the jungle”. But others blamed the economic desperatio­n that leads people to become poachers and the internatio­nal criminal syndicates they work for.

Julian Rademeyer, a project leader for TRAFFIC, which monitors the internatio­nal trade in wildlife, said effective measures are needed to attack the global rings that deal in rhino horn and elephant ivory.

“The rage and anger of many people at the rampant poaching that is endangerin­g rhinos and elephants is understand­able. But the joy and gloating over the death of a poacher is crass and misguided,” Rademeyer said. “Killing poachers will not stop poaching. Poachers are just the foot soldiers of internatio­nal criminal syndicates.”

EXTINCTION

The world’s rhinos are in danger of being hunted to extinction. They are prized for their horns, which are ground up and used in traditiona­l Chinese medicine as a supposed cure for a variety of ailments.

South Africa, which has about 80 per cent of the world’s remaining rhinos, has seen aggressive poaching of the animals in recent years. Last year, 769 rhinos were killed illegally, down from more than 1,000 annually since 2013, according to Save the Rhino.

SERIOUS PROBLEM

“Poaching is a serious, ongoing problem in the park,” Phaahla said of Kruger, which covers 7,500 square miles in southeaste­rn South Africa, making it about the size of the American state of New Jersey.

After the death of the poacher, whose name and nationalit­y were not released, relatives asked park officials to help recover the body. Rangers searched on the ground and by air but did not find the remains before it got dark, Phaahla said. The two surviving hunters gave officials a more precise descriptio­n of where they left the dead man. Police arrested them on suspicion of poaching.

“The next day, our field rangers searched in the bush and made the gruesome discovery,” Phaahla said. “There was a pride of lions nearby which apparently had devoured his body.”

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