Urgent action needed to curb rhino poaching

THE embattled Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (EKZNW) is now considering initial proposals submitted by the DA in a bid to curb rhino poaching. This after more than two years of ongoing slaughter.

Written parliamentary questions posed by the DA have revealed how the KZN provincial executive will now consider a host of crime-fighting and anti-rhino poaching techniques. The vast majority of these have been reiterated repeatedly at portfolio committee and legislative meetings, yet have to date been ignored.

Official records have also exposed that between January 1 and March 25 this year, 61 rhinos were poached solely from Ezemvelo parks. Unofficially, this number is close to 80.

The Ezemvelo management has now belatedly proposed the following:

Increased field ranger capacity. The involvement of crime intelligence and “other law enforcement entities”.

Reviving provincial priority crime structures improve intelligence.

This response is a slap in the face to the public and conservationists who have, for years, lamented the poor co-operation between various law enforcement entities and Ezemvelo.

Meanwhile, dedicated crime intelligence operatives – who apprehended and shot armed poachers – have been systematically worked out of the SAPS while an electronic anti-poaching nerve centre in the Hluhluwe-Mfolozi Park is largely dysfunctional.

The only positive when it comes to KZN’s Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (EDTEA) response to the recent poaching surge is a candid admission that the failure to fill critical vacancies has contributed to the poaching crisis.

EDTEA MEC Ravi Pillay and his political cohort now need to make speedy budgetary interventions. The current proposed budget simply does not do enough to save this species.