On World Rhino Day, South Africa marks progress but still loses a rhino daily to poachers

DINOKENG GAME RESERVE, South Africa (AP) — The Dinokeng Game Reserve in South Africa has a thriving rhino population, but their exact numbers and the details of the security operation that keeps them safe from poaching are closely guarded secrets.

They are the protocols that reserves with rhinos follow to ensure they’re not the next target for poachers who still kill on average one rhino every day in South Africa for their horns despite decades of work to save the endangered species.

South Africa has the largest populations of both black and southern white rhinos of any country and sees itself as the custodian of the animals’ future.

As conservationists mark World Rhino Day on Monday, South Africa remains in a constant and costly battle against poaching nearly 30 years after black rhinos were declared critically endangered, and more than a half-century since southern white rhinos were on the brink of extinction with just a few dozen left.

Progress, but hundreds of rhinos still killed every year

South Africa has more than 2,000 of the 6,700 black rhinos left in the wild or in reserves and 12,000-13,000 of the world’s 15,000 remaining southern white rhinos, which are now listed as near threatened after a turnaround. Those two species are only found in the wild in Africa. South Africa has a pivotal place in saving them but also is the epicenter of rhino poaching that is linked to organized crime.

South Africa’s rhinos are spread between government-run parks and private owners like Dinokeng.

The country has made marked progress in the last decade with that public-private collaboration, bringing the number of rhinos killed by poachers from well over 1,000 every year to 420 last year. Yet, 195 rhinos were killed by poachers in the first half of this year, according to the South African Environment Ministry, still one every day.

“Please do not tell a ranger that we’re not going to win this war,” said Marius Fuls, a wildlife monitor and ranger at Dinokeng. “If we as conservationists stop believing that we’re going to win this, then we have lost it. We’re the last thin green line between the extinction of rhinos.”

Some reserves continue to dehorn their rhinos to make them useless to poachers who kill them because of the high demand for rhino horn products for medicinal and other uses in parts of Asia. Studies indicate that rhino horn products sold through illegal markets sometimes fetch higher prices than gold.

The fight against poaching is always looking for new ways to stop rhinos being killed. This year, a group of scientists in South Africa working with the International Atomic Energy Agency launched a program to inject small amounts of radioactive material into rhinos’ horns. The aim is to make them unsellable, but also detectable if they are smuggled through borders.

The scientists said the radioactive material does not harm the rhinos.

Operation Rhino revived

Conservationists are also moving rhinos to new areas in a repeat of South Africa’s famous Operation Rhino of the 1960s. That operation was a reaction to the drastic situation of southern white rhinos, which were nearly extinct. It moved some of the last remaining white rhinos in eastern South Africa to other areas so they could be better protected and establish new breeding populations. It is credited with saving the southern white rhino.

Several conservation organizations are doing that again now, both in South Africa and elsewhere.

One of them is Peace Parks Foundation, which has sent nearly 50 black and white rhinos to the Zinave National Park in neighboring Mozambique, a reserve which was decimated by poaching.

The operation — expensive and complicated — has returned rhinos to Zinave for the first time in more than 40 years and the population is already growing, with eight rhino calves born there since the relocation, according to Peace Parks.

“It’s been an incredible success story,” said Gillian Rhodes, combating wildlife crime program manager at Peace Parks Foundation. But she added rhino poaching rates are still “devastating.”

World Rhino Day was started in 2010 to raise awareness of the threat of poaching and habitat loss for all five of the world’s rhino species. The other three, which are found in Asia, are in an even worse predicament. There are just over 4,000 greater one-horned rhinos, only around 50 Javan rhinos and less than 50 Sumatran rhinos left, according to the International Rhino Foundation’s latest count.

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

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