Johannesburg - South Africa has lost 199 rhino to poaching since the
beginning of 2012, the department of environmental affairs said on
Monday.
"Latest statistics indicate that the Kruger National Park
is still the most targeted by poachers with the park having lost a
total of 119 rhino from the beginning of this year," department
spokesperson Albi Modise said.
In a statement, he said the
targeted provinces included Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and
KwaZulu-Natal, which collectively accounted for 73 killed rhino.
Thus far, 122 arrests had been made of which 108 were poachers and 14 were either couriers or buyers.
South
Africans were urged to report incidents of rhino poaching or any
tip-offs that could lead to arrest and prevention of illegal killing.
According to the department, in 2010 there were 146 rhino poached in the Kruger National Park and a total of 333 nationally.
Under fire
In 2011, there were 252 rhino poached in the Kruger National Park and 448 nationally.
On Saturday morning, a policeman and a game ranger were both shot and killed in the park.
The
policeman, accompanied by a soldier, was searching for rhino poachers
in the park's southern Tshokwane section when they came under fire,
police spokesperson Colonel Vishnu Naidoo said on Sunday.
"The
shooting resulted in the [police] member being shot and killed. In
return, the defence force member fatally wounded the shooter," said
Naidoo.
"It emerged later that the shooter was in fact an on-duty [SA National Parks] game ranger."
An inquest docket had been opened to determine the circumstances and cause of the incident.
According
to reports, on Monday Kruger National Park spokesperson William Mabasa
said that since the start of 2011 there had been 25 shoot-outs in the
park.
War zone
Beeld quoted a source as saying that since the anti-poaching campaign was stepped-up, the park had turned into a "war zone".
It reported that throwing various groups together in the fight against poaching caused mutual distrust.
The
newspaper also reported the source as saying that rangers were
specifically trained to track poachers, whereas police and soldiers were
not.
On Monday, Naidoo said there were no new developments in the investigation into the past weekend's shooting.
He also felt the article was distorted.
He
did not want to elaborate, but said the inquest into the shooting would
take time and any comment now would be purely speculative.
When contacted, Mabasa said he would comment later this week.
Courtesy of Mark Rosenthal
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Nearly 200 rhino poached in SA
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment