Poaching may wipe out rhinos.

[abc]

Poaching may wipe out rhinos.

AFP MARCH 19, 2012 COMMENTS

Corruption among officials is contributing to the ongoing slaughter of
rhinos.

Rhinos will be wiped from South Africa's wildlife parks by 2015 if
poaching continues at its current rate, a campaigner fighting to save the
beasts has warned.

And corruption among officials is contributing to the ongoing slaughter,
said veterinary nurse Karen Trendler.

In a career spanning almost two decades, 50-year-old Trendler has raised
200 baby rhino orphans at a wildlife sanctuary in Pretoria, earning the
nickname "Mama Rhino."

She is planning to open a special treatment centre for them, warning that
the situation has become critical.

Poachers nabbed 448 rhinos last year, and in the first three months of
this year the toll stood at 109 - a kill rate of more than one a day.

While the poachers target the adult rhinos for their horns, baby rhinos
often die too, unable to survive alone.

The sharp increase in poaching has raised concerns among experts that the
animals could disappear from the wild within the next four years,
Trendler said.

"You hate to sound alarmist . . . but if the poaching continues at the
current rate we could see the rhino go extinct.

"There are predictions that by 2015 we could have no rhino."

The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that some people working in
wildlife conservation and animal welfare have been implicated in the
lucrative poaching industry, Trendler said.

"There are some incredibly good guys in the business who are doing
amazing things and who would give their lives for those rhino.

"But unfortunately we do have an element of corruption. There have
already been prosecutions and arrests, where government officials are
complicit."

The booming market for rhino horn and increasingly sophisticated poaching
methods help explain the devastating death rate, Trendler said.

"There is a growing economy in Asia, so there is more disposable income
to pay for Chinese traditional medicine.

"There is easier accessibility, poachers have better technology. On top
of that there's the sinister part of it where it's actually being
stockpiled against extinction.

"So they just take up as much as they can get and it's held in stockpile
for the time when the numbers drop and the value of the horn goes up,"
Trendler said.

Trendler is building a rhino orphan-age near Mokopane in Limpopo, in the
north of the country.