Saving the rhino requires creative ideas — and cash

DEEP in the bushveld of the Kruger National Park a war is being fought. It is a vicious conflict where the body count last year was 47 — and that’s before we even get to the death toll among the rhinos. Like all wars, the truth is one of the first casualties in this one, too.

Apart from the odd rhino carcass shown to reporters and photographers, and interviews with game rangers, soldiers and policemen about the difficulties of the battle against the poachers, we know little.

Close to the frontline, tourists mosey along the Kruger Park’s roads and lounge in its rest camps, blissfully unaware of the fighting just a short game drive away. The tourists are on the lookout for the big five, soon to become the big four. Within two years black rhino may have been eliminated from the park; within a few more years, the same fate could await the white rhino.

During the past two weeks a Sunday Times reporter visited both sides of this frontline. The story was a depressing one — we are losing the war against the rhino poachers. The main reason for this is that South Africa is already three years behind. By the time the country woke up to the danger, the enemy were well entrenched and the resources being deployed against them too few and too weak. In some cases, game rangers are being turned into soldiers, hardly a way to wage a war.

Tactically, South Africa and Mozambique could win back some lost ground with a “surge”— deploying more troops, using sophisticated equipment such as night-vision goggles for soldiers and pilots, and generally making life hell for the poachers. The gains from such a strategy, sadly, would be short-term.

Those who are closely involved in the fight to save the rhino believe there is a hearts-and-minds way to win this war.

One of them is former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, whose foundation has examined the roots of the poaching: poverty. Poor Mozambicans must be allowed to reap the benefits of conservation, he says. This would prevent them from falling prey to the syndicates who run the rhino-horn trade to the Far East where buyers are under the misguided belief that the horn has curative powers.

If those foot soldiers can be persuaded that there is better money to be made in protecting rhino than slaughtering them, the real battle will be won. Chissano is seeking R12.6-million in start-up costs and about R60-million a year from public and private donations. While he’s about it, he might give his own government a nudge; Mozambique is doing little to combat the problem on its side of the fence.