|
|
|
|
| |
| Location: |
Africa - Southern Africa - Zimbabwe |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Poaching |
| Species: |
African Rhino Species |
 |
|
Then, in a single afternoon in January 1985, six rhino were killed in the Lower Zambezi Valley. The war on rhino had suddenly moved south of the Zambezi.
?Saving rhino is mainly a question of protection. And that costs money', explained Rowan Martin of Zimbabwe's Department of National Parks. ?The minimum annual expenditure for protected area management - in an easily protectable area, requiring a single game ranger for every fifty square kilometres - is two hundred dollars per square kilometre. Anything less is just throwing away money,. We are spending only ten dollars a square kilometre and losing rhino.'
The lower Zambezi holds one of only two black rhino populations still numbering over 400 animals. But with an area of 12 000 square kilometres, where Martin says they could use five times the present number of field staff, efficient protection would cost up to seven million US dollars a year for the lower Zambezi alone, in a country where an incredible 12 per cent of the land is in conservation areas. Obviously, there is no hope of meeting such costs.
Since 1986, Operation Stronghold has been saving rhino by killing Zambian poachers, although its real task is detection and intervention. ?Each gang stays in the valley for an average ten days. Our job is to find and arrest, or if necessary, to kill poachers before it's too late for the rhino,' says Tatham. Black and white scouts, whose fighting experience in the bush goes back to opposite sides of the Rhodesian war for independence, are combining radio equipment, a helicopter, training and motivation with a clear-cut objective. Patrols can be on the trail of an armed gang within hours instead of days - and the consequences are often fatal.
Nevertheless, 70 poached rhino carcases were found in 1987. Zimbabwe, too, is pulling back its line of defence: 284 rhino have been translocated to safer parks or behind the fences of private ranches in the midlands, the deep heart of the country away from the borders of Zambia and Mozambique.
|
|
|
Rhino's last stand in Africa
File available
details
Original text on this topic: