High-tech poachers threaten fight to save rhinos

Joshua Howat Berger Yahoo News 22 Dec 10;

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – A booming black-market demand for rhinoceros horns is driving a lucrative new wave of high-tech poaching that threatens the fight to save the world's rhino populations from extinction.

The epicentre of the crisis is South Africa, which has lost nearly one rhinoceros a day to poaching this year.

But conservationists fear the problem could spill over into other regions, pushed by a surge in demand for rhino horn in Asia, notably in Vietnam, where it is used as a traditional medicine and sells for tens of thousands of dollars per horn.

South Africa, which is home to more than 70 percent of the world's remaining rhinos, has lost 316 of the animals to poaching this year, up from 122 last year, and a jump from less than 10 each year two decades ago, according to Joseph Okori, African rhino coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund.

"It has been a disastrous year for rhino conservation," Okori told AFP.

He blamed the surge in poaching on "well-organised syndicates" that use helicopters, night-vision equipment, veterinary tranquilisers and silencers to hunt their prey at night.

"The criminal syndicates in South Africa operate on very high-tech. They are very well-coordinated," Okori said. "This is not normal poaching."

Conservationists estimate there are around 25,000 rhinos left globally, with three species in Asia and two in Africa.

Asia's rhino populations have already been pushed to the brink of extinction by hunting and deforestation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists both Javan and Sumatran rhinos as critically endangered and Indian rhinos as vulnerable to extinction.

In Africa, conservationists have fought to restore the continent's black and white rhino species, both decimated by hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Thanks to the large-scale creation of national parks and efforts to combat poaching, the southern white rhino, once thought to be extinct, now numbers 17,500 and growing.

Black rhino numbers are also rising and stand at 4,200 -- though this is a fraction of the hundreds of thousands thought to have roamed the continent in 1900, the IUCN says.

But that resurgence now faces a setback as a new wave of poaching hits the continent.

While the rhino horn trade is banned under the 175-member Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the use of rhino horn in Asian traditional medicine has continued to feed demand. In one recent case, a rhino horn sold for 70,000 dollars, according to CITES.

The wildlife monitoring group Traffic, which has studied the medicinal use of rhino horn powder, says the substance is used as a fever-reducer in traditional Chinese medicine.

More recently, researchers say, a belief that rhino horn can cure cancer has emerged in Vietnam.

Tom Milliken, Traffic's director for east and southern Africa, said that belief -- together with Vietnam's recent economic boom -- is helping drive the current surge in poaching.

"Vietnam suddenly emerged in the mid-2000s as a new market," he told AFP.

"In my view it is the largest rhino horn market in the world today and really stands behind this trade."

Milliken led a delegation of South African officials to Vietnam in October to meet with his contemporaries there on measures to curb the trade, but no agreements have been reached.

South African officials are meanwhile targeting the supply side.

The government launched a National Wildlife Crime Investigation Unit in October to crack down on poachers.

Parks and game reserves have also begun a range of inventive anti-poaching programmes, including dying the horns, tracking them with micro-chips and cutting them off before poachers can get to them.

But Milliken fears the crackdown in South Africa will only displace the problem to other regions.

"That's the whole history of the rhino horn trade to Asia," Milliken said.

"There's unlimited consumer demand driving this, and if it's not contained at source, it historically has swept from one country to another."

Rhino poaching on the rise in Kenya
Herve Bar Yahoo News 22 Dec 10;

LEWA CONSERVANCY, Kenya (AFP) – Melita's bloody, stripped carcass still lies in a dip between two hillocks, a once stately black rhino slain by poachers in early December in Kenya's Lewa private wildlife reserve.

The two-tonne mammal is now reduced to its hindquarters, a horribly mutilated head and a spinal column stripped bare by scavengers.

Melita, who was 22, is the latest victim of a worrying surge in poaching which has hit the whole of this region of hills and high plateaux, a wildlife paradise on the flanks of majestic Mount Kenya.

And her killing followed hard on that of Stumpy, a female black rhino of 41 who was the oldest of her species in the reserve until she was gunned down in recent weeks.

Melita's killers, three men armed with kalashnikovs, struck at nightfall at the northern perimetre of the park.

"They must have been hidden since the previous day at a look-out point to spot their prey," ranger Steve Kisio recounted, seemingly impervious to the putrid smell rising from the carcass.

"Our teams heard shots fired around 6:30 pm. After a brief exchange of fire with our men, the poachers were able to escape under cover of darkness."

One of the three was arrested shortly afterwards thanks to an informer in the nearby town of Isiolo. The poacher was caught as he was about to flee towards the Somali border.

"This time they didn't have time to carry off the horns, but park officials had to cut them off," Kisio explained, saying he is saddened by this latest loss.

Some 225 kilometres (140 miles) north of Nairobi, the Lewa private wildlife conservancy is one of the last rhino sanctuaries in Kenya and is home to 117 of the herbivorous mammals: 64 black rhinos and 53 white rhinos>.

Kenya's total rhino population is around 600. Lewa's rhinos roam freely over 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres), along with buffaloes and elephants.

Lewa, where Britain's Prince William recently got engaged, is famous for its rhino protection work and is often quoted as a model conservancy in wildlife protection circles.

The site was created in 1995 by a family of white Kenyans but "this is the first time we have seen such a rise in poaching," said John Pameri, head of security and chief ranger at the reserve.

"We've never seen anything on this scale."

Four rhinos have been killed by poachers in the past 12 months, among them Stumpy and Melita since the end of October. The phenomenon has hit the whole of the region where 15 elephants have been killed for their ivory in the past two weeks," Pameri told AFP.

"We feel there is a real escalation, prompted by an increasing and strong demand from the Far East, and China in particular (...)," the manager of Lewa conservancy Jonathan Moss said.

The price per kilo (2.2 pounds) has risen to the order of 600,000 shillings (6,000 euros), which "is astronomical in a community where typically someone will earn 200 shillings a day (2.5 dollars/1.8 euros)."

"So the temptation to engage in feeding that illicit demand is massive," Moss underlined.

Some rangers make a direct link with the increased presence of Chinese nationals in the country, and in particular with the installation of Chinese companies working on large-scale road-building projects.

Pameri, for his part, was more prudent. "Obviously something is happening. There is a strong demand that we didn't have previously," he said.

Somalis or Kenyans of Somali origin are also said to be involved in the trade as intermediaries or brokers.

In the face of the threat, Lewa reserve has put in place a programme of night patrols, surveillance of rhinos on a daily basis, air surveillance, networks of informers and above all the involvement of local communities, described by Moss as the cornerstone of any poaching strategy.

"We can do and be sure we will do everything here in Africa to cut off the chain of supply," said Lewa's director.

"But at the end of the day, the only solution is to address the demand in Far East".