Anti-Poaching Rangers and the War to Save Africa’s Wildlife.

The last stand to save Africa’s elephants, rhino and other endangered species.

By Michael J. Reinhart

The full moon rises on the Bushveld of Southern Africa. Rhino Buzz, a nickname given him by his team mates, squats in the dark as he mans the observation post. His knees hurt. Buzz is a veteran of the Australian Defense Forces. He and his fellow rangers received intel earlier that poachers will attempt to enter and cross this preserve to kill rhino. Surrounding them is a vast plain of thorny scrub brush and scattered forests hosting deadly nasties large and small. In the quiet, he reflects on earlier in the day and the Puff Adder snake he nearly sat on during a rest break. His mind then wanders to back home where his friends are just getting out of warm beds readying for work. Buzz can almost smell the coffee brewing.

The bush goes deadly quiet. The eyes of each ranger flash in the dark amid a flurry of hand signals. Buzz feels the familiar knot in his stomach and the adrenaline dump. He tries to slow his heart rate and control his breathing. Appearing in the moonlight is a four-man team of poachers. Armed with an AK 47, a high-powered rifle and various hacking and cutting tools, they’ve come for rhino horn. The poachers will fight for it. They will kill for it. They are why Buzz is here.

Poaching: The indiscriminate and illegal killing of animals is classified a “wildlife crime.” The targeted animals: The rhino for its horn, the elephant for its ivory tusks, the lion for the magic said to be possessed by its bones. Africa has suffered grievously from this mass slaughter.

Sudan lay slowly dying. Overcome by complications due old age, he was the last of his kind. Sudan, the last male Northern White Rhino died on March 19, 2018. Only two females survive. His entire species is on the edge of extinction. Killed by poachers. Their horn fashioned into handles for daggers in Yemen and to stock the shelves of Chinese medicine shops. The African rhino is the second largest mammal in Africa. The continent once teamed with them. Hundreds of thousands roamed sub-Saharan forests and savannahs. Now only an estimated 25,000 survive. Poachers continue to kill them at a rate of more than 600 each year.

Satao II, one of Kenya’s famous Big Tuskers and a favorite of visitors, was killed by poachers using a poisoned arrow. Once the poison had taken effect, the killers hacked off Satao’s large tusks. There may only be 25 of his kind left. Elephants, Africa’s largest mammal, numbered 1.3 million in 1979. By 1987, poaching had reduced African elephant populations by more than half to 600,000. By 2019, poaching reduced the elephant herds down to 350,000. Poachers continue, on average, to kill 10,000 to 15,000 African elephants each year. Their tusks hacked off to be sold to ivory collectors.

It all starts in Asia and the middle east. Traditional Chinese medicine uses rhino horn as a treatment for fevers. In Vietnam, practitioners believe it cures cancer. In Yemen, when a man reaches adulthood he is presented with a dagger, a jambiya which he will wear as part of his traditional dress. The most prized of these jambiya are made with a handle of polished rhino horn. Recently, rhino horn, which can be polished to a luster and carved similar to ivory or jade, is becoming an objets d’art and status symbol for Asia’s wealthy.

In the Asian markets, rhino horn sells for as estimated $22,000 per kg or more. International trade in rhino horn is illegal, so crime syndicates have organized to reap huge profits offered by the Asian demand. The syndicate’s recruiters seek out men with hunting skills who live near rhino sanctuaries. Many of these men have served in the military or with a militia. These locals know the land and can easily navigate a poaching crew through the bush in the hunt for rhino.

The poachers travel in groups of three or more and are provided firearms and ammunition by the syndicate. The firearm most often used is the AK 47 assault rifle. The hunt takes two or three days. The poaching crew will not stay longer for fear of getting caught. Once a rhino is shot, one member of the crew hacks off the horn with an ax or panga. This may take five to twenty minutes depending on the skill of the poacher. This is a vulnerable time for the poachers as the sound of the gunshot and gathering vultures give away the crime scene. Once the horn is removed, the rhino is left to the scavengers and the poachers make their escape out of the park. The crew earns about 62,000 to 124,000 South African Rands or about $3,625 to $7,251 each. A considerable sum given that the average hourly wage for a worker in these areas is only around $3.10 an hour. The rhino horn is passed on via transporters and intermediaries to be smuggled out of the country. Along the way payoffs are made to local authorities and customs officials.

Across the globe, military veterans are volunteering to deploy into the bush to train and assist local rangers in the fight to stop the poaching syndicates. The call to serve is strong in them. A willingness to risk themselves in a call to a worthwhile cause. These vets have the training and skills to take on heavily armed poachers. However, this comes at a great personal cost. These volunteers pay their own expenses and give several months of each year to deployment. Their personal and professional lives suffer. Then there are the risks posed by the African bush. On average two rangers are killed in the line of duty every week. More than half of all ranger deaths are due to animal attacks. Large predators, elephants and buffalo, venomous snakes and scorpions, not to mention the most dangerous of all, the disease carrying mosquito, all will kill you in the bush. The poachers are responsible for the other half of ranger fatalities.

Who are these people, the vets who volunteer to risk and fight to save Africa’s wildlife? Who would answer the Shackeltonesque help wanted ad that reads?

“No pay.

Constant threat of death/ serious injury.

No recognition for your sacrifice.

You pay all your own expenses”.

Buzz was born in North Africa, but his family immigrated to Australia when he was a teen. Growing up in Australia, he has always had a keen interest in wildlife. Weekly allowances were spent buying animal figurines and he had a talent for drawing the animals he played with. The television program “Cowboys in Africa”, a show about two cowboys from the U.S. who go to Kenya, Africa to work on a game ranch, made a big impact on him. The young Buzz looked up to people who protected animals. At 17, he enlisted in the Australian Defense Force and trained with U.S. special forces. Years later, his interest in animals led him to safari in South Africa. This safari changed the course of his life. While in South Africa, he learned about the problem of poaching and how poachers were killing Africa’s wildlife to near extinction. He needed to do something about it. This led him to volunteer as an anti-poaching ranger.

Buzz’s first deployment was to a game reserve in Mozambique. Located on the border of South Africa’s famous Kruger Park, this reserve was the infiltration point for Mozambican poachers going into the Kruger to kill rhino. The reserve itself was also losing a lot of animals. Using snares and dogs, armed with spears and poison arrows, the poachers would take game for sale as meat in the village markets.

Near this game reserve is Mozambique’s Massingir region. The region is home to some of the most organized and violent of Mozambique’s criminal syndicates. Its members are well armed with AK 47 assault rifles and high-powered hunting rifles and these poachers are unpredictably dangerous. Prior to a raid, the poachers will go to a local witch doctor who, after payment made and rituals performed, convince these poachers that bullets cannot hurt them and that they are invisible. Believing they are protected by these spells; the poachers fight rather than surrender to arrest if caught. Members of the syndicate are fond of wearing red sports team jersey’s and stand out in these villages flashing lots of money with no known job.

During one of his first deployments, Buzz recalls a time his team had discovered a possible entry point through the reserve’s fence. A set of human and dog tracks were found that stopped at a point along the fence and then returned back to where they had come from. It looked like someone was doing a recon of possible entry points and the poachers would come back that night to infiltrate the reserve. Buzz and the team set up that night to capture the poachers as they came through the fence. The team hunkered down and waited. The near full moon rose. A ranger, using night vision glasses, saw the poachers at the fence. The rangers were outnumbered by the heavily armed group. Another ranger yelled for the poachers to stop and then all hell broke loose as the poachers opened fire. Escaping arrest, the poachers ran into the darkness. Attempts by poachers to come into the reserve stopped for some time after this incident.

The land and the animals the rangers protect pose a bigger threat than the poachers. Buzz reports that just a few days ago, an elephant charged and killed a ranger in Kruger National Park. “You hear that a lot.” He points out that they are there to protect the wildlife, but the animals don’t know that. “The dangers are so, so real with those wild animals, mate, its just intense, really intense.” Recently, a fellow ranger sat down under a tree to rest. As he rested, a Mozambican cobra slithered up his pant leg. The cobra’s bite will kill you within two hours. The ranger felt a sting. He jumped up and frantically shook the cobra out of his pants. An anxious moment passed as his leg was examined. Fortunately, it was just a scratch and the ranger survived. Africa’s buffalo are notorious for charging and killing many rangers in the bush. Then there is the land itself with thorn bushes that tear and rip flesh and the ticks carrying the fever.

A ranger’s survival depends on his bush craft and animal skills. Buzz observes that “Africa is different than home …, everything in Africa can kill you.” “You have to be so observant, be alert, very alert when you’re walking out in the bush. During his first deployment, Buzz was sent out on a small red motorcycle to check the fences. Along the way he gathered pigeons that died flying into the fence. They call them “Bush chicken” and Buzz was bringing them back to camp for lunch. “Good tucker.” Coming around a corner, he came upon a herd of buffalo. The head bull charged. Buzz gunned the bike trying to escape. Rounding a corner, the bike went down in the soft sand. The buffalo was no where to be seen, but the bike was busted and Buzz’s ankle severely sprained. He limped back to camp pushing the bike and for the next several days tended his ankle. Then the call came in the night of possible intrusion by poachers. Not to be left behind, Buzz laced up his boots, bad ankle and all, set out on foot patrol with the unit. The rangers saw a flashlight up ahead and sped up their pace. Buzz could not keep up but thought he would be able to find his unit by the noise when the poachers were engaged by the ranger patrol. He limped along but did not hear a sound. Then he saw it. A leopard not more than 40 meters away from him. The leopard, nose up sniffing the wind is looking for prey. Buzz gathers up elephant dung and smears it all over himself to hide his sent. The leopard moves on apparently tracking other prey. Buzz walked alone the seven kilometers back to their camp. “It’s quite intense walking in the African bush. The wildlife is way more dangerous than the poachers.”

The poachers’ crime is often only discovered when the rangers come across the rhino carcass left behind. The rhino herd one step closer to extinction. The site of the mutilated animal is hard on the rangers. Bapi, another volunteer ranger recalls such a scene on his first deployment. He was working with a local ranger team. He describes these rangers as strong, tough and stoic. Coming across a freshly killed rhino, these otherwise hard men broke into tears. Buzz, military veteran and anti-poaching ranger, admits he has broken down a few times. When asked why he keeps going back into the bush, he says “we are at war, at war to save the animals. If we give up, we’ll lose the rhino. If we’re not there, the animals will be slaughtered. Never should we look back and say I should have helped them when I had the chance. No rangers, no animals.”

During the time it took to write this piece, 6 rangers were killed in an ambush in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The war to save Africa’s wildlife is intense and deadly. International volunteers and local rangers continue to fight the criminal syndicates with little support and less recognition. As long as the demand for rhino horn and elephant ivory continues, rangers and animals will die.

References:

TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, November 2020 Traffic.org

CITES.org

SavingRhinos.org

ICORP.org

International Anti-Poaching Foundation IAPF.org

World Customs Organization wcoomd.org

The UN’s Lone Ranger: Combating International Wildlife Crime by John M. Seller