The Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa’s largest game reserve, has lost 351 rhinos in the past two years to poaching, the Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s biggest opposition party, announced on Wednesday.
According to MP Dave Bryant, who is also Shadow Minister for Forests, Fisheries and the Environment, who brought the issue up in parliament, the portfolio parliamentary group indicated that “rhino numbers have declined again from 2,809 at the end of 2020 to 2,458 currently”.
The South African parliamentarian criticized the policies of the Pretoria government against poaching of rhinos in South Africa, the largest reserve of these animals in the world.
This statistic contradicts claims that government anti-poaching efforts in Kruger are adequate to deal with the current poaching epidemic.”
“Earlier in the year, the DA revealed that 87 ranger positions were vacant in the Kruger National Park and this Wednesday it was confirmed that these positions will be filled by Sanparks by the end of the current exercise,” said the South African MP. in opposition.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Dave Bryant also explained that at the meeting of the parliamentary group, held on Tuesday in Cape Town, officials from Sanparks – the public entity responsible for managing the Kruger National Park – “asked members of the parliamentary group an increase in the budget for animal conservation”, urging the government to consider the request.
In August, the South African government announced that poaching had killed 259 rhinos in South Africa in the first six months of this year, mostly in the south-east of the country.
The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, indicated that the number of these large mammals illegally hunted in the country between January and June of this year “is 10 times greater than the 249 hunted throughout the country in the first six months of 2021…”
From January to the end of June 2022, 82 rhinos were killed by poachers in the Kruger National Park, according to South African authorities.
The government revealed that 69 people were arrested in connection with rhino poaching and rhino butt trafficking in the country, with 13 poachers arrested in the Kruger National Park, which borders Mozambique.
Source: Observadora
