Cathy Dean with White Rhino friends.
There has been a lot of coverage of the poaching of three adult black rhino at Imire in Zimbabwe, and Matthew Wilkinson from Safaritalk asked me about Save the Rhino’s perspective on this.
I’d like to put these poachings in context.
During the 19th century, as European influence over land use and trade strengthened, the black rhino, which was previously the most numerous rhino species with several hundred thousand animals, was hunted relentlessly across sub-Saharan Africa. By 1970, there were an estimated 65,000 black rhino remaining.
Rising oil prices increased demand for rhino horn in the Yemen, where it is used to create ornamental dagger handles. Rhino horn is also used in the Far East as Traditional Chinese Medicine to bring down fever. An upsurge in poaching, the so-called “Rhino Wars” of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s reduced the black rhino to just 2,400.
Throughout East and Southern Africa, government and conservationists put together anti-poaching and monitoring programmes, supported by community and education work, and numbers have slowly increased to approximately 3,725 black rhinos (African rhino numbers are collated once every two years by the African Rhino Specialist Group, and the most recent numbers available are as at 31 Dec 2005). Rhinos are classified by the IUCN (World Conservation Union) as “critically endangered”, that is, they "face an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild." ZSL's EDGE project (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) lists the black rhino at no 7 in its list of the 100 most EDGE-y mammals.
Turning to Zimbabwe specifically: in 1980, when the country gained independence, there were approximately 2,000 black rhino. Serious cross-border poaching then flared up in the Zambezi Valley, which spread to other former rhino strongholds. A national rhino conservation strategy was launched with several main features: the creation of Intensive Protection Zones (IPZs) within National Parks; a regular dehorning programme; the export of over 30 black rhinos to overseas captive breeding facilities; and the development of a rhino custodianship scheme, whereby rhinos were moved to private land. After an all-time low of approximately 370 animals in 1993, rhino numbers began to rise again. Today, about 530, or 14%, of Africa’s black rhinos, are found in Zimbabwe.
As anyone who reads the newspapers knows, since 2000 Zimbabwe has faced many problems and for people and wildlife, the situation has become serious. The rhino custodianship scheme, for example, has been undermined by the large-scale land invasions throughout Zimbabwe and the deteriorating political and economic situation. The concern is that the poaching we are seeing now might be just the start of the fire, and that there might be a return to the scale of poaching last seen in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Despite the Imire poachings, and others this year (a total of 21 for the period Jan-Nov 2007), good rhino management practices mean that, overall, Zimbabwe's rhino population is increasing at the rate of 4% per annum. This is pretty good, when compared to the African Rhino Specialist Group’s recommended target of a 5% growth rate per annum. Some parks and conservancies are faring better than others, due to better local political and economic conditions amongst other factors, and in the Lowveld Conservancies, one of the projects that Save the Rhino International supports, for example, the annual growth rate is actually a very high 9%. This figure is mitigated by losses elsewhere in the country.
I should emphasise that cooperation between the various Zimbabwean NGOs and the Department of Parks and Wildllife Authority (the government department responsible for rhinos) has been very good, and that all of the national rhino steering committee's recommendations have been adopted, albeit sometimes with delays.
It is often helpful when the media picks up on particular stories, as with the poachings in Imire, to highlight a particular problem and to generate emergency funding. However, Save the Rhino’s view is that the great need is for agencies to be able to work together effectively to continue to mount monitoring and anti-poaching patrols, and to arrest and prosecute poachers. For that we need to be able to provide regular and frequent grants. One-off situations can have one-off solutions, but for ongoing rhino conservation work, a coordinated, long-term effort is required.
For more information about Save the Rhino International, and the projects we support in Africa and Asia, please visit our website, www.savetherhino.org.
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