JOHANNESBURG, July (ANA) – A game of cat and mouse is being played between South Africa’s dedicated conservationists and poachers decimating the country’s endangered wildlife. But the good news is that this week a rhino’s life was saved by canine Annie, one of the dogs operated by the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s (EWT) Conservation Canine Project, after she tracked down three poachers in a reserve on the western boundary of the Kruger National Park.
The name of the reserve has not been released as a police investigation is currently underway.
EWT, in support of the fight against rhino and elephant poaching, provides trained dogs to reserves to assist in their anti-poaching operations. The dogs are trained to either track humans or detect wildlife contraband like rhino horn and ivory, as well as ammunition. One such dog is canine Annie. She has been trained to track and is used to follow up on poacher sightings, fence incursions and to follow poachers away from crime scenes.
“During the early hours of the morning I received a call from one of our neighbouring reserves,” said Colin, Annie’s handler. “One of their night observation posts thought they had seen a poacher walk past. I was asked to go and assist in the follow-up with Annie.”
The poachers had unfortunately walked in the same area as the field rangers making it difficult for Colin to indicate to Annie which tracks he wanted her to follow. Furthermore, they had covered their shoes with socks to make tracking them visually even more difficult. Nevertheless, Colin and Annie persisted until they located the area in the bush where the poachers had split in different directions.
“It became almost impossible once they had turned off into the bush but this is where Annie’s tracking skills came into play. For her, them wearing socks had no effect on her tracking ability,” Colin said.
Two poachers were subsequently spotted lying in the long grass. They were armed with a rifle with a silencer, ammunition, an axe and other poaching equipment and were arrested.
“Undoubtedly the life of a rhino was saved today because of this team’s tracking skills and the many hours spent in observation posts and patrols by the field rangers employed by the reserve to protect their rhino,” said EWT.
But further action was still to come.
In a later follow-up operation by the SAPS to arrest the poachers’ pick-up team, one suspect was arrested by the police and another fled the scene on foot into a neighbouring reserve. Annie was then put on the trail on the fleeing suspect.
“I placed Annie in the vehicle driven by the suspect and gave her the command to follow up. This enabled her to know who we were looking for and when she exited the vehicle it did not take her long to get on track,” said Colin.
“We tracked for about 1 km through very thick bush, made contact and arrested a very tired and demoralised suspect who thought he had evaded the law. Overall a good day for Conservation Canine Annie and her team!”
- African News Agency (ANA)
