As dawn breaks on the hills and the plains of the Timbavati Game Reserve on Friday morning, Anton Mzimba fastens his leather boots, tightens his belt and prepares his rifle for the dangers lurking in the wild.
Mzimba, whose name literally means the body, has been putting life and limb on the line to save rhinos and other wildlife from marauding poachers for the past 18 years on the eastern edge of the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga Province.
Having been crowned the “Best Field Ranger in Africa” at the Rhino Conservation Awards 2016 last month, Mzimba says being a field ranger and defending the lives of wildlife is a calling.
“It’s a calling from God,” says Mzimba, adding “It’s driven by passion.”
Mzimba takes the protection of animals very seriously and personally. He says finding poached rhinos in the reserve is “the most painful thing” which brings him to tears.
“If you look at the size of the horn in relation to the whole carcass of the animal, you realise that it’s a massive animal that has died and that it’s just a waste. I used to avoid going to the scene where rhinos had been poached because I would cry,” laments Mzimba.
As part of Associated Private Nature Reserves (APNR), the fences separating Timbavati from the other member reserves and from the Kruger National Park have been removed, allowing wildlife – including lions, elephants, cheetahs and other species – to roam freely between these reserves.
Mzimba leads a team of more than 40 armed and unarmed rangers who have completely prevented rhino poaching at Timbavati for the last 14 months.
“If the rhino goes extinct, then it would be the next animal to go extinct until finally it’s the human race. If we want to protect our livelihood, we’ll have to stop rhino poaching,” says Mzimba.
In 2015 at least 1,175 rhinos were poached in South Africa.
As a response to rhino poaching, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) established an environmental monitors programme in 2010. It involved recruiting and training youths under the Extended Public Works Programme in partnership with the Department of Public Works. Environmental monitors were recruited from previously disadvantaged communities. They are trained to record observations of key environmental changes in the area where they lived.
The number in the programme have grown from 30 environmental monitors at Sabi Sands Private Nature Reserve to more than 1,600 people across the country.
Apart from successful arrests, investigations and sentencing of poachers, the programme has also resulted in a 50 percent reduction in rhino poaching in private reserves and about a 76 percent reduction in snaring across the country.
Pitso Mojapelo, the deputy director of national programmes for the DEA, says the programme began as a rhino poaching response, but has since grown to monitor the state of natural resources, and contribute to the more scientifically orientated objectives.
“Our environmental monitors do fence, border and anti-poaching patrols. But they have evolved to provide us with information regarding water quality, alien invasive plants, game census and other information, as well as providing community and scholar awareness,” Mojapelo said.
About 100 kilometres away on the western edge of Kruger National Park in Phalaborwa, Limpopo, a group of 12 young women on the Olifants West Region of Balule Nature Reserve begin their day with chanting a “war song” in SePedi as they dress up in their military fatigues for the day ahead.
They are part of the award-winning elite 36-member anti-poaching unit, the Black Mambas, a Transfrontier Africa project which was started in 2013 to defend the big five, especially the rhino, at the private game reserve.
The Black Mambas also participate in the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Reserve programme, an extensive community-driven initiative that provides additional support to the Kruger National Park as well as numerous neighbouring private host institutions.
Each member of Black Mambas patrols at least 20 kilometres a day on foot.
Sadly, on Tuesday, Balule, which struggles with a continuous invasion of infiltrators from the Mozambique side of Kruger National Park, lost a rhino.
When African News Agency (ANA) visited the reserve on Thursday, the Black Mambas discovered more than 40 snares that had been set up to trap animals.
Head Warden of Balule and director of Transfrontier Africa, Craig Spencer, said poaching was about more than just rhino horns as it destroyed the very fabric of society and acted as gateway to more serious crimes, including murder.
“Poaching is not only a form of organised crime, but it creates social decay as school children and old people are drawn into it by a false economy, destroying even quality of lives,” Spencer said.
“So poaching is more than just a rhino horn. That is why I have dedicated more than 21 years of my life to see it being eradicated.”
South Africa Today – South Africa News
