Nearly 500 rhinos were killed last year in South Africa by poachers, an increase of 11% compared to 2022 despite the government's efforts to protect the animal, authorities said on Tuesday.
The country, where the majority of the world's rhinos live, is particularly victim of poaching fueled by demand from Asia, where its horn is used in traditional medicine for its supposed therapeutic effects.
Strengthen security
According to the Ministry of the Environment, 499 of these mammals were killed in 2023, mostly in state-owned parks.
The majority were culled in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, where Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, Africa's oldest reserve, alone lost 307 animals.
“These are the largest losses due to poaching recorded in this province
,” said Environment Minister Barbara Creecy.
“Multidisciplinary teams continue to work tirelessly to try to slow this pressure
,” she added.
In recent years, South African authorities have strengthened security, particularly around the Kruger National Park (north-east), close to Mozambique and very popular with tourists, which has seen its rhino population fall drastically over the past 15 years.
These efforts have resulted in a drop in the number of these animals killed by poachers - 78 in 2023, or 37% less than the year before - in this park.
But this also led poachers to turn to other reserves, regional or private, such as that of Hluhluwe-Imfolozi.
Law enforcement arrested 49 suspected poachers last year in KwaZulu-Natal, Creecy said.
And in the country, 45 rhino horn poachers or traffickers have been convicted by the courts, she added.
Black market
Among them, a former park ranger was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing a rhino and later claiming to have been charged by the animal.
Since 2023, national parks have required their new employees to take a lie detector test, fearing that some are in cahoots with poachers.
Rhinoceros horns are highly sought after on the black market, where their price, by weight, rivals that of gold or cocaine.
Last September, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicated that thanks to efforts to preserve the species, the number of these animals had increased in Africa.
The continent was home to nearly 23,300 specimens at the end of 2022, a figure up 5.2% year-on-year, according to the IUCN, which speaks of the first
“good news”
for this animal in a decade.
Some 15,000 of these large herbivores live in South Africa, according to a separate estimate from the International Rhino Foundation.
But for Jeff Cooke, of the environmental protection NGO WWF, this
“progress remains fragile as long as poaching continues to be rampant”
.
The number of animals killed in KwaZulu-Natal in particular raises
"grave concerns"
, he added.