The continued decline in the rhino population in the Kruger Park, South Africa’s largest animal sanctuary, is “worrying,” the country’s largest opposition party lamented on Wednesday. The party denounced the government’s policy against poaching.
The wildlife park has lost 351 rhinoceroses, or about 12 percent of its population, since the end of 2020, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said in a statement. The opposition party quoted official figures released at a meeting of parliament. The number of rhinoceroses in the national park dropped from 2,809 at the end of 2020 to 2,458 today.
75 percent
According to the NGO Save the Rhino International, nearly 10,000 of these mammals roamed the Kruger National Park in 2013. In less than ten years, 75 percent of the population would have disappeared.
The government said in August that 259 rhinoceroses fell victim to poachers in the first half of the year. Authorities arrested 69 people for poaching and smuggling horns, 13 of them in Kruger National Park. According to DA, the latest figures “refute claims that the government’s efforts to combat poaching in the Kruger Park are sufficient”.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, poaching and illegal trade have declined in rhinoceroses in recent years, but remain a serious threat to these animals. Their survival is on the agenda for the 19th meeting of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) in Panama in November.
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