Just as Eastern Cape environmental officers were celebrating a huge cycad smuggling bust on Thursday, poachers shot dead two rhinos at a private game reserve outside Komgha and hacked their horns off.
Devastated Frank Krull, manager of his father’s Alvin Krull Tyityaba Game Reserve, said the young bull and mature female were found deep in the bush early on Saturday.
Their horns, valued on the black market at more than R6-million, were chopped off after probably being shot. Div de Villiers, director of the green scorpions in the Eastern Cape’s department of economic development, environmental affairs and tourism, lashed out at the “cruelty dished out by the savage beings who mutilate these poor creatures for their horns”.
Krull appealed to government to legalise the sale of horn as this would be the only way to crash the illegal market price and save rhino from extinction.
He said police were hot-on-the- heels of the suspected poachers and whom Krull believed had inside information and employed professional hunting skills to find and shoot the rhino.
On Thursday, De Villiers hailed Jansenville police and the green scorpions for impounding a Gauteng-bound truck laden with 44 cycads valued at R2-million.
They were allegedly poached from a farm adjacent to the Addo National Park. De Villiers said Jan van Staden of Gauteng, Honest Chipanga, Sonondo Ndlovu and Admire Marima, all from Zimbabwe, appeared in court in Jansenville yesterday.
They were held in prison, ahead of their bail application next Monday and charged with possessing and transporting an endangered species and bribery and fraud-related to fake permits.
“People know who the poachers are. We ask them to come through to us,” said De Villiers.
Anyone with information can also anonymously call the following number: 078-696-9494.
Rodney Visser, who is in charge of anti-poaching for Indalo, which represents eight reserves in the province, said 15 rhinos were poached in the Eastern Cape last year. Nationally, 1215 rhinos were poached last year, 1004 in 2013 and a total of 4061 since 2000.
“Every year the scoreboard just starts ticking again and we are not finding the answer.” — mikel@dispatch.co.za
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