Electric fence to keep poachers from rhinos

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 32

Electric fence to keep poachers from rhinos

By

MICHELLE FAUL,

of Associated Press, through NZPA Lake Nakuru, Kenya Conservationists are putting up 74km of solarpowered electrified fence for a sanctuary to save Kenya’s dwindling rhinoceros herd from extinction and to keep out poachers who kill them, for their horn. Since 1970, wildlife experts say, the country’s rhino . population has dwindled from 18,000 to fewer than 500. The sanctuary, intended as a safe breeding area, is centred on Lake Nakuru National Park, about 160 km north-west of Nairobi.

The 140 sq km park now has only one rhino among its lions and leopards and is better known as a bird sanctuary: the lake is home to an estimated 1.5 million pink flamingoes. A half-hour’s drive from the lake, rangers are at work putting up the electrified fence; but Peter Jenkins, a wildlife expert providing technical advice for the project,}

said it still could be too late. “Even if we could stop the poachers, stop the killing, our rhino population

now is so scattered, so fragmented, that the animals would die anyhow,” he said. Rhino horn is used widely in the Arab nation of North Yemen to make handles for traditional daggers. In eastern Asia it

is believed to have medicinal powers — from treating high fever to use as an aphrodisiac. African rhino horn commands SUS6OO ($1116) a kilogram wholesale, and horn from the less plentiful Asian rhino fetches up to SUS9OOO a • kilogram, according to wildlife experts. Esmond Bradley Martin, a Kenya-based geographer who leads, an international project to halt the trade in rhino products, said in a report last year that the world rhino population had fallen from 70,000 in 1970 to 11,500 in 1986. Several African countries, Zimbabwe chief among them, have tough anti-poaching laws to pro-

tect rhino and have formed paramilitary units armed with automatic weapons to fight poachers.

The plan in Kenya is to capture some remaining animals and keep them in the sanctuary where they can breed away from poachers. The World Wildlife Fund and other conservation groups are working with Kenya’s Government to raise at least SUSI million to save the rhinos. With money from the fund, wardens have built more than half of the electrified fence that, as well as giving a strong jolt to those who touch it, sets off an alarm warning guards posted at 10km intervals. •.

A holding pen in the half-built sanctuary already is home to the single rhino, the 10-year-old Amboni, named after a river from which he was captured four years ago.

“He was very gentle and even ate out of my hand when we first caught him,” said Mr Jenkins.

Initinily Amboni was kept cufy a private ranch.

But when he fell ill last year, conservationists took advantage of his drugged state to move him to the the sanctuary in October. Amboni’s thickly forested home is protected by large wooden slats and an electrified fence.

“He has tried to break out three times, but seems to have settled in lately and has marked out three or’four favourite snoozing places,” said Mr Jenkins. “His only complaint may be that he’d like a larger territory.” Eventually, the plan is to build other sanctuaries at other game parks. Some of the sanctuaries’ future inhabitants will come from small private farms that have proved almost too successful. At a ranch in Solio, for example, the rhino population has grown from 23 to 85 in recent years and now is threatened with overpopulation.