De-horning of rhino population begins

Herald Reporter May 31, 2007

ZIMBABWE has started dehorning all 780 rhino left in the country to stop poaching and conserve the world’s third largest rhino population.

The rhino population drastically declined in the 1980s, with some of the worst affected countries such as Botswana having to rely on donations from Namibia and Zimbabwe to help rebuild their herd.

The Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and other stakeholders will fork out more than US$2 000 a day in the Save Conservancy where the dehorning exercise got underway this week.

"Our team, which comprises officials from the World Wide Fund for Nature and the national wildlife veterinarian, Dr Chris Foggin, will spend the next two weeks dehorning rhinos in the Save Conservancy before moving to Chiredzi," Parks’ chief ecologist Dr Henry Madzikanda said.

He said protecting the slightly more than 780 black and white rhino was critical following incidences of poaching in some parts of the country.

But despite falling victim to poacher’s rifles, the rhino population is at last on the rebound.

At a stakeholders’ meeting a few weeks ago, the World Wide Fund expressed concern to Environment and Tourism Minister Cde Francis Nhema that up to 40 rhinos had been poached in the country’s conservancies.

Dr Madzikanda said to enhance the protection of rhinos in a number of protected areas, the authority inserted sensors under the rhinos’ skins to assist them monitor their movements and to know when they are missing.

"We want poachers to know that if they kill any rhino in Zimbabwe, they will not find any horns. We are keeping them all in highly secured places for our future generations. We can also trace our poached horns and have managed to recover several of them in the last two years," Dr Madzikanda said.

The chief ecologist said the dehorning was not only expensive but also called for high security. The bulk of the expenses went to hiring an aircraft which cost up to US$450 a hour as well as the upkeep of five people whose job is to protect the horns.

"We do not work with five people from one area but entrust new officials on daily. These are the people we assign to keep and protect the horns. The horns have to be ferried to safe places by the five and we do not expect any tricks," he said.

Dr Madzikanda said a number of the surviving rhino were placed in private conservancies where they are under the intensive protected zones’ programme to ensure absolute protection.

"We at the moment have no capacity to carry rhinos. We identified Gonarezhou National Park as ideal but the problem is that site we want to keep more than 200 rhinos is home to the Chitsa people."

He said the authority’s major challenge at the moment was to reduce the ever growing elephant population, which Dr Madzikanda said now exceeded 120 000.

"Key rhino habitats were destroyed by the elephants to the extent that the country’s biggest national park, Hwange, cannot accommodate a significant number of rhinos," Dr Madzikanda said.

Hwange National Park has up to 50 000 elephants, well above its recommended carrying capacity of 15 000. Save Conservancy, to which 60 elephants were translocated in 1992, now has to cope with over 1 000.

"This means the owner of the conservancy has to mainly prioritise the management of the rhinos, whose survival could be endangered by the large population of the elephants."

No horn, no poach. No horn, no hunt. No hunt, no money. No money, no food. No food, no Rhino.

Poachers would come along and kill them anyway. Wasn't there something about poachers going after rhino a few years ago and only found the de-horned ones and killed them?

...here is a guy from Save - poachers can still get "some ounces" there...

so uncle bob gets the horns and sell them instead of the poachers. wow

I agree with Butch about the real motive behind this. However hasn't de-horning been tried before and ended up being a failure? I can't remember the reason why. Was it a failure because of what 475Guy speculated will happen or additional reasons?

-Steve

The good news is Mali and Kenya are doing their part at CITES to make sure the elephant in Zim won't be hunted - that oughta help things!

The de-horning op has just finished in the Save, unfortunatly not all were done due to time and the chopper had to pull out early. But the main animals were done in the invaded areas were the main threat was coming from. (imagine that) The team were very dedicated and worked 18 hours most days. The statement of 'this has been done and not worked in the past' is correct, however that was a 'war' with zambians coming in and a shoot on sight from the Zimbabweans so yes the guys would shoot the de-horned rhino so as not to follow again. There is no shoot on sight at the moment and we are dealing with a few desperate indaviduals due to the Zim situation, backed by alleged South African bussinessmen with no morals. So lets hope that we don't have a repeat of the past, but it's the best we can do with what we have. Thanks for your guys support.