Det er sjældent, at vi hører en succeshistorie fra Zimbabwe, men det er tilsyneladende her lykkes at tackle et af Afrikas helt store problemer. Mens næsehorn i stor stil bliver slagtet af krybskytter over det meste af Afrika, stiger bestanden nemlig i det sydøstafrikanske land. Det skriver Mongabay onsdag. With its collapsed economy, entrenched poverty, and political tremors, one would not expect that a country like Zimbabwe would have the capacity to safeguard its rhinos against determined and well-funded poachers, especially as just across the border South Africa is currently losing over two rhinos a day on average. And indeed, without the Lowveld Rhino Trust (LRT), rhinos in Zimbabwe would probably be near local extinction. But the LRT, which is centrally involved in the protection of around 90 percent of the country’s rhinos in private reserves along with conservancy members, has proven tenacious and innovative in its battle to safeguard the nation’s rhinos from the poaching epidemic. “Since [2009] the [Lowveld Rhino Trust] conservancy populations have been rebuilt to a current total that once again is close to 400. Because black rhinos elsewhere in Zimbabwe have not shown this population recovery, the Lowveld conservancies have become the key populations for Zimbabwe,” Raoul du Toit, head of the LRT, told mongabay.com. “However, the Lowveld conservancies are still subject to the political and economic turmoil that has afflicted Zimbabwe for over a decade and was not resolved through recent elections, so the situation for their rhinos remains precarious.” Long-considered a curative in traditional Eastern medicine—despite zero evidence—rhino horn is increasingly viewed as a status symbol among the wealthy in places like China and Vietnam, exacerbating the illegal trade. Poachers, who are often underpinned by organized criminal gangs and corrupt officials, have left thousands of rhinos dead in the past few years and dozens of wildlife rangers trying to protect the megafauna. In fact, as LRT has found, keeping rhinos safe today is a massive undertaking, involving not only high-tech monitoring and tracking of rhinos, but working with local communities and the judicial system. The result however has been that Zimbabwe has seen its rhino population rise since 2009, unlike many other countries worldwide. “We try to maintain a situation in which rhinos can save themselves through effective breeding. By concentrating our efforts on the areas that have ecological and economic potential for large, viable rhino populations rather than frantically ‘fire-fighting’ to maintain fragmented populations, we can build and maintain the larger populations to the level that poaching losses (which can never be totally avoided under current funding constraints) are more than compensated for by births,” du Toit says. LRT’s strategy has been to move faltering rhino population into well-protected areas. This means, fewer populations in the country overall, but bigger populations surviving in highly-managed landscapes. “We have made many enemies in both the public and private sectors by our efforts to wrestle rhinos away from those who attempt to keep them in ever declining populations, but we have seen annual population growth rates of around 10% as result of our efforts at demographic consolidation in adequately extensive and more secure areas of good habitat, which means that the rhinos can save themselves as the evolutionarily successful species that they are,” says du Toit. LRT also makes rhino conservation meaningful to locals: the organization provides support to local schools based on the growth of the resident rhino population. If rhino populations are booming: schools receive extra funds from LRT. If poachers are decimating the population than that money is moved to anti-poaching efforts. Læs mere her: http://news.mongabay.com/2013/1002-hance-wcn-lrt.html#rwOvyUOssqbRQZvh.99
