South Africa Fights the Poachers

South Africa’s rhinoceroses — 70 percent of the world’s rhinos — are approaching a tipping point as rapacious gangs of poachers feed a global black market in the horns. In the next two to four years, conservationists say, more rhinos will likely be destroyed by poachers than are born, with the price of rhino horn booming in Asia because of foolish notions that it is a healing agent.

Frantic plans are under consideration in South Africa to relocate significant numbers of rhinos out of the largest and most victimized preserve, Kruger National Park, to sanctuaries as far away as Australia. But the threatened extinction of this magnificent creature obviously cries out for stronger international countermeasures, particularly from such countries as China and Vietnam where demand has driven up the price of rhino horn to rival that of gold.

The government of South Africa has tried a serious crackdown on poachers, with one recently sentenced to 77 years in prison and dozens of others arrested this year. But the armed gangs use night-vision goggles and silent tranquilizer guns to continue the slaughter, with the rate this year running at a clip that could surpass the 1,004 rhinos killed last year — and far beyond the six poached in 2000 before the craze for rhino horn took off.

Rhino herds at the vast Kruger preserve, a mainstay of South Africa’s lucrative tourism industry, are estimated to total up to 12,000. With 700 guards assigned to protection and regularly engaging in nighttime gun battles with poachers, the scene in the park has been compared to a virtual war zone in which close to two rhinos are destroyed every day. Officials have considered extreme measures such as poisoning rhinos’ horns. They even debate the possible legalization of poaching to drive the market price down.

Meanwhile, the government has been puzzling over what to do with an 18-ton stockpile of rhino horn accumulated in the course of this struggle. (Several nations have recently destroyed stockpiles of illegally harvested elephant tusks, sending the message that there is no future in poached ivory.) This is one of the bizarre side-effects of a growing ecological disaster that reaches far beyond South Africa to the world at large.