Goatherds restore black rhino numbers

Press, 10 March 1988, Page 35

Goatherds restore black rhino numbers

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg Ten nomadic goatherds, patrolling a vast desert on donkeys, have turned the tide for Namibia's threatened black rhinos. Armed only with the khaki uniform of South Africa’s private Endangered Wildlife Trust, they have virtually eliminated poaching in the Damaraland and Kaokaland regions of northwest Namibia. “It is a terribly dry and harsh region, but these men know their way around. They know the people and they can find tracks where no white man would see the faih* test sign of poachers,” said the Trust’s spokeswoman, Ms Petra Mengel. Sponsored by a local

uranium mine, the 10 former goatherds patrol an area of over 200,0005 q kilometres against rhino hunters.

Their equipment is limited to a bedroll, a water bottle and a binocular.

The guards are away from home for days at a time. Though they have no authority )tp arrest poachers, their) tracking skills allow them 1 to follow the tracks of hunters who are then reported to official game rangers. Rhino horns; (prized in the Far East as an aphrodisiac and lin North Yemen for knife handles, can fetch up to SUSSOOO ($7450) a kilogram, said the Trust’s environmentalist, Dr John Ledger.

He said the black rhino population in the region, one of the last (true wilderness regions (of Africa that is not a proclaimed nature reserve, had dwindled to about 80.

“Now we know that there are at least 100, many of them with babies,” Ledger said. “The tide has been turned by the auxiliary game guards."

The black rhino, which is distinguished | from the grazing white rhino by a pointed upper j lip, was among the most threatened species in) Africa.

“We estimate there were about 60,000 black rhino in Africa south of the Sahara in j. 980. Now there are about: 3700 left, most of them, in southern Africa, where I they are still being poached for their horns,” Ledger said.

Ms Mengel i said the donkey guard project, costing only l SUS6OOO ($8940) a year, would probably be expanded.

"With their help, we have secured a number of convictions,” said Ms Mengel. “The rhino are on the increase again."