Efforts to combat rhino poaching have led to coordinated efforts among countries in Southern Africa and the in Asia.Funds are being raised,organisations and societies are being formed.Millions are being spent in combating rhino poaching in a country full of inequalities.
Are our rhinos important than humans?Just imagine Nineteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is now judged to be one of the most unequal societies in the world and its 19 million children bear the brunt of the disconnect.
A 2012,UNICEF report found that 1.4 million children live in homes that rely on often dirty streams for drinking water, 1.5 million have no flushing lavatories and 1.7 million live in shacks, with no proper bedding, cooking or washing facilities.Four in 10 live in homes where no one is employed and, in cases of dire poverty, the figure rises to seven in 10.A total of 330,000 children - and five million adults - are currently infected with HIV, and 40 per cent die from the pandemic annually.Child support grants, introduced in 1997, now reach 10.3 million children but another one million who are eligible do not yet receive them.Yet millions are being spent on combating rhino poaching.
One wonders whether we should divert these hard earned funds to more appealing projects such as improving service delivery and improving the countries' education standards for instance.
However the million dollar question is "Are we winning the war on rhino poaching?"
Last year the governing Council of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a project that aims at strengthening wildlife forensic capabilities in South Africa to combat wildlife crimes.
The US$ 3 million project was developed in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and with the support of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The project aims to reduce poaching of rhinoceroses and the illegal international trade in their horns by strengthening enforcement capacity in southern Africa through forensic-based technologies.
This highly funded project is yet to realize tangible results as the rate of rhino poaching is still increasing a year after commencement of the project.
As the general governing council of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) will be meeting this coming June in Washington DC,I do hope a review of progress on this project will be made.
The following is just a capture of media covering on the rate of rhinoceros poaching in Southern Africa in 2013.
The last rhino in Mozambique has been killed by poachers.At least that's what the media would have you believe.A few weeks ago, a local Johannesburg paper, the Times, ran a story about game rangers in the Mozambique section of the Great Limpopo Trans frontier Park, who colluded with poachers to murder the last 15 rhinos out of an original population of 300.
The Times cited a statement from the reputable conservation group,International Fund for Animal Welfare(IFAW), which based its facts on a Mozambique press agency story from last week.
According to Chines press;china.org.cn the number of rhinos poached for their horn in South Africa has increased to 249 since the beginning of the year, according to the latest statistics released on 26 April,2013.
The Kruger National Park remains the hardest hit, with the number of rhinos poached since last month increasing from 167 to 180, the Department of Environmental Affairs said.
A total of 21 rhinos have been slaughtered in North West Province, 18 in KwaZulu-Natal, 17 in Limpopo and 13 in Mpumalanga.
While rhino poaching continues unabated, the fight against the scourge is also gaining momentum.
The number of alleged poachers arrested countrywide has increased to 78, with two alleged couriers arrested in KwaZulu- Natal in the past week. This brought to five the number of alleged middlemen arrested so far the year.
A total of 73 people are facing poaching related charges and some additional charges of illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. Of these, 36 were arrested in the Kruger National Park, 17 in Limpopo, 13 in KwaZulu-Natal, eight in North West and one in Mpumalanga.
As intensified efforts failed to stem rhino poaching, a debate is underway on whether the government should declare unchecked rhino poaching "a national disaster."
However 19 years after apartheid, an ordinary citizen is still in abject poverty for instance check Alexander township in the north of Johannesburg.A black South African is still living in a squatter camp without clean drinking water and electricity using a communal Flush toilet of poor sanitation along the old Pretoria road,it does not make any sense to them waste more millions on rhino poaching than tending to the society needs.
Poverty in Africa
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