National Geographic Society
National Geographic Partners
LLC
worldâs
SANparks
SANParks
countryâs
Earth League International
the South African Police Service
Global Initiative
Skukuza Regional Court
justiceâa
South Africaâs Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries 2019
Rhino
KwaZulu-Natal
courtâs
Mhala Regional Court
Justice
Correctional Services
Hudson
bars.âEngelbrecht
the Department of Justice and
the Mpumalanga High Court
Pilanesberg National Park
sheâd
StopRhinoPoaching.com
the Magistrates Commission
Ethics
the International Rhino Foundation
the University of Pretoriaâs Veterinary Genetics Laboratory
the Department of Environment
Kruger National Park
Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations
Lowvelder
heâs
CityPress
Ministry of the Environment and Tourism
the University of Pretoria's
Veterinary Generics Laboratory
Earth League Internationalâs
Skukuza District Court
The South African Police Service
Current Biology
South African Police Services
Sandra Snelling
Skukuza
Kruger
Johan Jooste
Andrea Crosta
Al Jazeeraâs
Ansie Venter
Edna Molewa
â Venter
Sabie
Naomi Engelbrecht
Francis Legodi
Pippa Hudson
Phiri
Mhala
Kgama Shai
Elise Serfontein
Mahomed Dawood
Susie Ellis
thereâs
Fisheriesâ
Isaac Phaala
Leroy Bruwer
Joseph Nyalunga
Petrus Mabuza
involved.âJulian Rademeyer
SANParks
andâ
âfor
âWe
â Crosta
Simon Ngomane
Cindy Harper
Vish Naidoo
South African
SANParks
Asian
South Africaâs
Skukuza
Krugerâs
Chinese
Limpopo
Asia
Africa
South
courtâs
Southern Africa
Windhoek
Kruger National Park
The Poacherâs Pipeline
processes.âSerfontein
Mpumalanga
Mozambique
Krugerâs
China
South Africa
Los Angeles
North West
Mozambiqueâs
South Africa's
Mhala
Geneva
Bruwerâs
Phaala
bail.âWhile
Nyalunga
No matching tags
The spoor is fresh!â Sandra Snelling, an operations manager for South African National Parks (SANParks), exclaimed, sending a squad of rangers on their next mission: tracking the poachers who had just killed a rhino in Kruger National Park.It was October 2016, and Iâd come to Skukuza, a SANparks post inside Kruger, to see how anti-poaching operations are carried out in the famed 7,500-square-mile preserve, where about 30 percent of the worldâs estimated remaining 18,000 wild rhinos live.Urgent dispatches are no surprise to these rangers, members of a special operations unit. Poachers have killed more than 8,200 rhinos in South Africa during the past decade; from 2012 to 2017, Krugerâs white rhino numbers fell from 10,500 to about 5,100.In recent years, it seems, the anti-poaching battleground has expanded, as criminal networks appear to be infiltrating South Africaâs judicial and bureaucratic structures.âIt is difficult to convey the scale of the problem,â says Andrea Crosta, executive director of Earth League International, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit dedicated to fighting wildlife crime. In addition, wildlife advocates also point to the failure of the South African Police Service to renew a contract for DNA testing of rhino horn evidence, among other government inactions.Questions therefore arise among field personnel, investigators, prosecutors, lawyers and conservation organizations as to whether various individuals are making concerted efforts to undermine law enforcement and increase the chances for poaching suspects to walk free.Confronting the crime syndicates that finance and organize rhino killings is key to combating the relentless onslaught, Jooste said in a 2016 Global Initiative investigation into transnational organized crime and rhino horn trafficking. Meanwhile, rhino killings in parks in other provinces, such as KwaZulu-Natal and North West, increased, suggesting that poachers had begun to avoid Kruger.âThe higher the sentence, the bigger the deterrent,â Venter told me in May 2018 when I visited her in her Skukuza courthouse office, a stark room lined with hundreds of case files.These white rhinos crossed from Kruger into Mozambiqueâs Sabie Game Reserve, alongside South Africaâs eastern border. During the past decade, poachers have killed more than 8,200 rhinos in South Africa, almost 5,000 of them in Kruger; rhinos straying into Sabie stand almost no chance of surviving.Despite Skukuza Regional Courtâs rapid and dramatic success, on August 28, 2019, Naomi Engelbrecht, who administers regional and district courts in Mpumalanga province, ordered the courtâs entire roll of some 72 cases transferred to Mhala Regional Court, more than 50 miles away.Engelbrechtâs action took her boss, judge president of Mpumalanga province Francis Legodi, by surprise. Instead, Kgama Shai, a criminal defense attorney representing suspected poachers who would appear before the court, spoke on her behalf.âHer being spoken for by Shai really led people to question her motives and integrity,â says Elise Serfontein, founding director of StopRhinoPoaching.com, an independent South African nonprofit.In a ruling on April 22, Mpumalanga High Court declared Engelbrechtâs reasons for closing the court invalid and said sheâd âacted improperlyâ in defying Legodiâs orders and serving as magistrate to stop the re-transfer of cases back to Skukuza.In their written ruling, the justices also noted concerns that Engelbrecht may have âstopped the regional court from sitting at Skukuza as a result of request by the [accused poachersâ] attorneys.ââHer conduct had actual and potential harmful consequences,â the high court concluded. âSo they try to delay.âAccording to Venter, she and her prosecutor colleague typically finalized four to eight cases a month, whereas at Mhala court, only two of their rhino poaching-related cases were concluded between September 2019 and the end of February 2020.âThat slow justice sends a message to rangers that these crimes are not a priority,â Ellis says.Environmental investigators with South African National Parks collect tissue and other samples from a dead rhino, providing DNA evidence that can be used to connect suspected poachers to the carcass. âThe tender hasnât gone out to my knowledge, and no analysis has been done except in some very urgent cases,â says Cindy Harper, the labâs director.South African Police Services spokesperson Brigadier Vish Naidoo told National Geographic that he couldnât comment to avoid âdivulging critical information that has significant bearing on our investigation processes.âSerfontein says that this non-renewal, along with the closure of Skukuza Regional Court and the sidelining of effective personnel, suggests a pattern of corruption thatâs eroding law enforcement.
As said here by Laurel Neme