Betting behind poaching
Melanie Gosling
February 09 2009 at 11:11AM


Poachers with packs of dogs have been targeting Cape Town nature reserves where they hunt animals as part of lucrative betting schemes.

City officials say the poachers operate with up to 20 dogs at a time which hunt small antelope and anything else they can catch, particularly in the Blaauwberg Conservation Area and in the False Bay Ecology Park.

While they may eat what the dogs bring down, the purpose of the hunt is not to get meat for the pot, but to rake in money from betting on the hunt.

And when the poachers are caught, they have the money to hire expensive lawyers.

Stephen Granger, a manager in the city council's environmental resource management department, said hunting as a form of gambling was a relatively new phenomenon in Cape Town.

He said it appeared that the hunters worked with a gambling syndicate.

"The Blaauwberg Conservation Area has quite a lot of wildlife and it seems to be targeted as well as Rondevlei.

"There have always been some snares in the city's reserves, and these are probably put there to hunt for food, but this is something different. This is sport, it's game hunting as part of a betting syndicate," Granger said.

Punters bet on various aspects of the hunt, such as what species of animal will be caught, the length of time it will take to hunt it and which dog or dogs in the pack will bring it down.

"If this were a poverty thing it would be different. What's happening here is something akin to the 4x4 people and the damage they did to the flora and fauna. Sometimes there are up to 24 dogs hunting,” Granger said.

It was difficult to curb poaching in nature reserves, as law-enforcement officials had to catch poachers with the carcass, he said. When these gambling hunters were caught, “lawyers in big black cars” were soon on the scene.

Dalton Gibbs, of the city’s nature conservation department, said it seemed the same individuals were operating across Cape Town’s nature reserves. One had been arrested three times.

“We regularly stop people with 20 dogs, proper hunting dogs like greyhounds and whippets,” Gibbs said.

Officials said the problem was not getting the priority it deserved.

Julia Woods, the city’s biodiversity manager, said she was aware of the problem, but could not comment as she did not have the facts.

melanie.gosling@inl.co.za


This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Times on February 09, 2009

Incredible.... Only in Africa.

Why not shoot the dogs?

Bloody hell whats next betting if you pick up aids or not ???

quote:

Why not shoot the dogs?

It's not the dogs fault, if your killing something, make it the right something.

And not "Only in Africa"
We have a serious increase in dog fighting here, just North of London it's getting so common, it will probably appear at the London Olympics.
Wasn't too long ago some scrote got nicked for fighting Quail . WTF