IT’S an impossible question, isn’t it? ‘There’s good news and bad news, which do you want first?’ Well, I thought I’d be positive and go with the good news first. The Indonesians, custodians of the rarest of all the rare rhino species, the Javan rhino, are establishing a special sanctuary for the few remaining animals in the wild.
The Jung Kulon National Park on the main Indonesian island of Java is home to the last surviving 50 Javan rhino, a species that once roamed much of South East Asia. Their main problems are the usual, poaching for their horns and human encroachment through habitat destruction. The new sanctuary consists of just over 5000 hectares of Jung Kulon, (a Unesco World Heritage Site), it will have an electrified fence around it to keep the rhinos in and unwanted humans out, and it will hopefully become a major breeding centre of the species as they become more settled and less harassed. It is hoped that the sanctuary will be up and running by March. Well done Indonesia.
The bad news for rhinos is that 1004 of them were poached in South Africa alone in 2013, 606 of them in the Kruger National Park. That total is nearly three times the total of 333 for 2010 and that just for South Africa. Remember that rhinos are being poached throughout their range states in Africa, and in India, Nepal and South East Asia.
Now the good news for elephants. An article in a Chinese newspaper, the Southern Weekly, covering elephant poaching for the ivory trade, its consequences and its horrors, has, as they say, ‘gone viral’ on social media in China. It has already reached an estimated 10-million people in China’s major cities and in the sort of bracket that is the main market for ivory trinkets and chopsticks. Ten million may seem like a mere drop in the ocean of 1.3-billion people, but the article is apparently really having a positive impact on those who read it, most of whom had no idea that ivory came from dead, wild elephants. So, well done whoever wrote that article, it shows just what the media can do in terms of spreading the word.
The bad news for elephants is that an estimated 35 000 of them were poached for their ivory in Africa alone last year, that is one every 15 minutes, day in and day out, all year. It was guesstimated that in 1930 there were between five and ten million elephants in Africa and that now there are perhaps 450 000. That means that if the killing of elephants continues at this rate, they will have the same status as the Javan rhino in about 12 years.
I know we don’t have rhinos or eles on the lower South Coast (not that I’ve noticed anyway), but if you are perhaps visiting a game reserve, or anywhere else for that matter, and see something suspicious, report it: call 0800 205 005, 0860 010111 or Crime Line at 32211. Cheers!
Sources: News24.com, Department of Environmental Affairs, African Conservation Foundation, and the savetheelephants.com News Service.
