Rhino to Elephant Poaching Prompts Namibia to Deploy Army Unit

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-04/rhino-to-elephant-poaching-prompts-namibia-to-deploy-army-unit.html


Namibia has deployed soldiers to combat the threat posed by poachers to elephants and the world’s largest population of black rhino in national parks that stretch along the country’s borders with Angola and Botswana.

Poachers have killed 10 elephants and 10 black rhinos this year in parks in Kavango, Zambezi and Kunene, Environment and Tourism Minister Uahekua Herunga said in a telephone interview from the capital Windhoek today. The southern African nation has as many as 25,000 elephants, said Herunga, who declined to disclose rhino numbers for security reasons.

“We have created a permanent unit made up of the army and all security services solely dedicated to anti-poaching,” Herunga said. “The unit will be in place forever, or until poaching has been drastically reduced.”

The unit will patrol Namibia’s porous northern and eastern borders, said Herunga, who wants closer cooperation with Angola and Botswana to tackle global poaching syndicates that have infiltrated the region. About 8 percent of the continent’s estimated 470,000 elephants are poached every year, according to African Wildlife Foundation. Elephant ivory can be sold for as much as $1,000 a kilogram in Hong Kong.