Wyndham Hartley

3 December 2009

Cape Town — SA, once famous for saving rhinos from potential extinction, is fast becoming a big supplier of illegal rhino horn, with more than 250 animals poached across the country in the past five years.

While the population of white rhinos has recovered to the degree that some can even be legally hunted, the black rhino remains a seriously endangered species.

In a reply to a parliamentary question from Democratic Alliance MP Gareth Morgan, Environment and Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said yesterday that of the 253 animals poached between 2005 and this year, 114 were killed in national parks. The most animals killed in provincial reserves (58) were in KwaZulu-Natal -- ironically where the groundbreaking work to save the white rhino was done.
Of the total of 253 poached animals, 13 were black rhino.

Sonjica said that among the measures taken to try and halt the killing of these animals was a complete ban on the sale of rhino horn. All legal rhino horn legally acquired as a trophy must now also be marked in a particular way. Thus all unmarked horn is by definition illegal.

Additional measures included "the establishment of a national, multi departmental biodiversity investigators' forum in March, which had its first meeting in May".

"Provincial conservation and South African National Parks investigators and police officers use the forum to discuss, share and exchange information on wildlife related law enforcement organised- crime incidents, such as the increased illegal killing of rhinoceros. This forum co-ordinates and acts as a contact point where all biodiversity-related law enforcement information could be collected, accessed, distributed and tasked to specific subgroups of the forum," Sonjica said.
"SA was nominated to participate in the newly established Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Rhinoceros Enforcement Task Force at the Cites standing committee in 2008, where investigators from all Cites parties involved in the illegal trade in rhinoceros horn met to discuss problems and solutions to the increase in illegal killing of rhinoceros and the subsequent illegal trade in the horn."

Sonjica said rhino horn could be exported legally only if the rhino had been legally hunted and the horn was a trophy, or if a person who owned a horn was emigrating.