Botswana rhino poaching worsens as govt dithers

Rhino poaching in Botswana is getting worse, and the government is not helping matters in any way due to its split attitude on the crisis. On the one hand, the government of President Mokgweetsi Masisi — in power since 2018 — acknowledges the seriousness of the crisis but, when it suits it, the administration ambivalently denies any calamity and neglects taking decisive action.

Just a few months into the first wave of Covid-19 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic in March 2020, Masisi rang the alarm bell about the deteriorating black rhino poaching epidemic in his country.

“At the rate at which the black rhino population is depleting, I’m afraid our iconic species will be out by the end of 2021. There is a serious problem with poaching in this country and this must be stopped,” said Masisi, as quoted by Lifegate, a sustainable development outfit.

Masisi repeated his worry about poaching — that he averred as a “national security threat” — at a subsequent military pass-out parade.

He told the graduating senior army officers: “You graduate at a time when this country is facing a security challenge, such as high levels of poaching which threatens to wipe out our wildlife resources, that’s threatening the tourism sector which is one of the key engines of our economy.”

And, early this year, his predecessor, Ian Khama — who bears commercial interests in wildlife tourism — took to Twitter and claimed that a whopping 120 rhinos had been killed by poachers in the preceding 18 months.

Khama warned that the rhinos that were being killed with their horns on or not would be gone and “none left for tourists to see” after the Covid-19 pandemic, pretty echoing what Masisi had already publicly stated.

The backlash from government went at a tangent, though.

The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) accused Khama of making irresponsible statements and claimed that, in fact, poaching and other crimes linked to wildlife had gone down by 70% since March 2020.

Even then, the DWNP director, Kabelo Senyatso, insisted that government would not be publishing poaching statistics as the information was sensitive.

But, despite this denialism on the part of the Botswana government, anecdotes of worsening poaching are available.

Up to 2014, Botswana was globally considered a “safe haven” for wildlife.

Rhino poaching has been driven mostly by Asian demand, particularly in China where the horns are valued for both social status and their perceived medicinal utility.

South African, Zimbabwean and Zambian poachers have invariably been accused of leading the killing of the horned animals, but there is suspicion that military and intelligence officials are conniving with them.

Due to a widely publicised “shoot-to-kill” policy adopted in 1987 that was, however, never written into the country’s statutes, Botswana managed to reduce the poaching of endangered species like elephants and rhinos to insignificant levels.

This “zero tolerance” message was enhanced in April 2014 when then president, Khama, banned trophy hunting to save various wildlife species that were threatened with extinction.

Masisi, though, reversed the policy when he took over, and also took away full automatic guns from the wildlife department, thereby reducing their effectiveness in fighting poaching.

It was this “zero tolerance” to poaching, political will and runaway poaching in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia during Khama’s tenure which emboldened private safari operators and government to import a breeding population that would, in the long term, multiply enough to support a phased re-introduction of rhinos to the wild.

By 2015, Botswana had imported over 100 rhinos from Zimbabwe and South Africa, mostly to Mombo, a high security sanctuary in the Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta.

The facility, owned by Rhino Conservation Botswana (RCB), was chosen for its difficult terrain that can only be accessed by horse, boat or helicopter.

Fitted with surveillance collars and guarded round the clock by the Botswana Defence Force (BDF), which was under strict instructions to guard the animals round the clock, the Okavango

Delta rhinos were relatively safe then.

In October 2018, the first reports of rhino poaching in the hot-spot Okavango Delta emerged with gory images of crudely de-horned carcasses.

Despite losing many in battles as the BDF fought back, the poachers occupied and spread across the Okavango Delta.

By mid-2019 they were using canoes and horses to penetrate Mombo, in spite of the tight security provided by BDF and private anti-poaching units.

On October 4, 2019, the Botswana government reported that rhino poaching was spreading in the Okavango Delta: “The increasing poaching of rhinos is deeply worrying in a country that has, over the last few years, imported rhinos in an effort to revive and safeguard its rhino population.”

Four days later (October 10, 2019), Rhino Conservation Botswana (RCB) reported the poaching of two rhinos in one week.

“We are alarmed, to say the least, by the ability of these poachers to penetrate so far into Botswana, and in particular their ability to target our recovering population of rhinos. As with many other rhino populations around Southern Africa, the poaching appears to be well-supported by criminal syndicates and the poachers themselves are hardened expert hunters,” the statement said.

The organisation said it was shocked that the unchecked killings were happening at the heart of one of the “perceived safe zones” of the Okavango Delta.

The Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism ministry in

December 2019 released data showing that 31 rhinos were killed by poachers in the Okavango Delta between October 2018 and the end of the following year.

“The rhino poaching onslaught continues unabated in Botswana, with 47 rhinos lost to poaching in the last 12 months. This has devastated the rhino population and set back our work. This sudden and intense poaching onslaught was not expected.

“Botswana is under attack from organised international criminal networks employing African poachers with bush experience to do the shooting. It is highly likely that the criminal syndicates attacking Botswana are linked to