Poachers become prey
South Africa company creates security guard for wildlife
There was a time when hunters paid good money to hunt animals like antelope and buffalo at Simon Rood’s wildgame reserve. But on a recent day, Rood watched as one of his staff stared into a tangle of dried-out trees and waited to load his rifle during a training exercise. The quarry was something different.
“What do we eradicate?” barked Rood. “Poachers!” shouted his employee. Poaching has taken a devastating toll on iconic African wildlife, like the rhinoceros. In the early 20th century, there were about half a million rhinos in the wild internationally; today, there are less than 30,000 across Asia and Africa. The vast majority live in South Africa.
Protecting those animals has become a serious business. Rood decided several years ago to get out of the hunting industry and start a security company aimed at conserving wildlife.
Now he uses his land to train antipoaching guards that his firm, Nkwe Wildlife and Security Services, sends to work at private reserves.
“You can’t stop the poaching — that’s a pie in the sky. It’s about bringing the poaching to acceptable levels,” said Rood.
The slaughter has become an emergency for national parks as well as for South Africa’s private game reserves, where tourists come to stay at luxurious lodges and catch a glimpse of the “Big Five” — lions, leopards, elephants, buffalo and rhinos.
As of last year, 6,200 rhinos — roughly a third of the country’s rhino population — were living on private reserves, according to the Private Rhino Owners Association (PROA).
So far, most of the slain rhinos have been killed in Kruger National Park, the largest game reserve in South Africa. But as the government has ramped up the famous park’s security, poachers have started looking elsewhere.
South Africa’s private security industry already employs nearly 500,000 guards in homes, malls and offices to supplement a police force overwhelmed by high crime. In recent years, the anti-poaching industry has trained hundreds more guards to take on the menace in the country’s game parks.
“We’re talking about a global criminal syndicate, and it’s not getting smaller, it’s getting bigger,” says Karl Miller, chairman and CEO of the GES Group, whose subsidiary in South Africa provides anti-poaching rangers and security personnel to look after 1,600 rhinos across the country. “They’re very well funded, and they’re very heavily armed.”
Between 2007 and 2014, the recorded number of rhinos poached in South Africa soared from 13 to 1,215, according to the government. The animals are killed for their horns, which can fetch thousands of dollars per pound on the black market in Asia. In recent years, there has been a spike in demand in Vietnam, where the horns are used in what some locals believe are cures for maladies as diverse as cancer and hangovers, as well as for such high-end ornaments as cups and bracelets.
The South African government has declared rhino poaching to be a “national priority crime,” and has rolled out a raft of initiatives to combat the problem, including boosting security in national parks and moving rhinos to safer areas.
In the first eight months of 2016, more than 400 alleged poachers were arrested, according to the government, compared with 343 arrests in 2013 and 267 in 2012.
Although police investigate poaching crimes that occur on public and private land, landowners largely furnish their own security.
“Before, we could get away with having a couple of guys, not formally trained,” says Pelham Jones, chairman of the rhino owners’ association.
“We are all now required to provide armed anti-poaching units.”