By Ed StoddardPRETORIA Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:10am EDTDehorned rhinos are seen at the Kruger national p...

1. South Africa to combat poaching by moving Kruger rhinos
By Ed Stoddard
PRETORIA Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:10am EDT
Dehorned rhinos are seen at the Kruger national park in Mpumalanga province September 16, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Ilya Kachaev
PRETORIA (Reuters) - South http://www.trails.com/kruger-national-park.html Africa plans to move
up to 500 rhinos from its flagship Kruger National Park to counter a wave of poaching of the animals
for their horns, highly prized in newly affluent Asian countries as a sign of wealth.
Officials said on Tuesday the mission could see some of the animals shipped to nearby Botswana and
Zambia as South Africa grapples with a poaching epidemic that has seen more than 630 rhinos killed
so far this year, 408 of them in Kruger.
"We have to take rhinos to where they are safe," Markus Hofmeyr, head vet of the national park, told
a news briefing.

2. The latest census from the Kruger shows it has between 8,400 and 9,600 white rhinos. Despite the
poaching, the population has stabilized with an annual mortality rate, including poaching, of around
8 percent matched by an 8 percent birth rate.
The removals will be a huge operation that will involve tracking down the animals in rugged and
remote bush and then darting them with tranquilizers from helicopters. Moving
http://www.kwamadwala.net/bookings one animal could cost $1,500 or more.
"It is a mammoth task. We are looking to numbers of up to 500," Environment Minister Edna Molewa
told Reuters. "We must start soon."
Kruger rangers move some rhinos every year, with park management using the proceeds from sales
to private reserves to help fund conservation efforts.
A record 250 rhinos were moved in 2009 but the scale of the poaching problem had forced it to take
a more drastic approach, Hofmeyr said.
The focus of the operation will be on Kruger's eastern border with Mozambique, one of the world's
poorest countries, where poachers from impoverished communities are lured by the promise of
quick money.
Botswana in particular may be an ideal base for the relocated rhinos because it has vast areas of
sparsely populated and inaccessible wilderness.
South Africa is the epicenter of a surge in poaching over the last few years because it is home to the
vast majority of the world's population - 18,000 white rhinos and 3,000 black rhinos.
More than 1,000 were poached last year, three times the tally in 2010, to meet soaring demand for
rhino horn, coveted as an ingredient in traditional medicine in fast-growing economies such as China
and Vietnam.
According to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which monitors trade in
wildlife products, there has also been a shift from medicinal use to flaunting rhino horn as a sign of
wealth.
Its street value is estimated by some conservationists at $65,000 a kilogram, making it more
valuable than platinum or gold.
Elsewhere in Africa, elephants are being poached at an alarming rate for the ivory in their tusks,
while another species, the pangolin - a kind of anteater - is hunted because its scales are a prized
fashion product and its meat a delicacy.
(Editing by Ed Cropley and Alison Williams)
Link this
Share this
Digg this
Email

3. Print
Reprints
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/us-safrica-rhinos-idUSKBN0GC1AB20140812