Public feels SANParks’ impala

Members of the public were not willing to accept the explanation offered by the KNP and voiced their scepticism on Facebook.

MBOMBELA - The Kruger National Park’s (KNP) response to a video of an impala carcass being loaded into the back of a taxi, has caused an uproar among enthusiasts of the park.

The video was taken by Yvonnne and Martin Breytenbach on Saturday and went viral on Tuesday. It shows a group of men in civilian clothes loading the carcass of an impala that was allegedly killed by a leopard into the back of an unmarked taxi.

According to Yvonne, they came across the dead impala near Satara at around 12:00.

She said she and her husband had asked another visitor who had stopped at the carcass what had happened. The visitor told them that the impala had just been killed by a leopard and that everyone was waiting for it to return to claim its kill.

The Breytenbachs proceeded to switch off their engine and wait for the leopard to return.

“Suddenly we saw a taxi passing all the cars which were waiting for the leopard.

The taxi stopped next to the carcass of the impala. A man got out of the taxi and kicked the buck,” Yvonne explained.

SANParks, however, claimed that everything was “above board”.

In a video that SANParks released on Wednesday, veterinary wildlife services operations coordinator, Noah Konaite, said the men in the video were in fact KNP officials.

“The guys ran out of food so I gave them permission to go to Acornhoek to go and buy some. On their way back, they found an impala carcass on the road. They were told that the impala had been hit by a car,” Konaite said.

He said the men loaded the carcass and took it to the Satara section ranger.

“We did not do a post-mortem on it, but according to what they observed, the animal had been hit by a car and was long dead,” Konaite said.

Frequent KNP visitor, Rupak Hattikudur,