Elephants, zebras, impalas, giraffe, buffalo, and gnus are easily seen upclose while driving through Kruger National Park. As a result, people are not allowed to get out of their cars, except in special designated areas.
We were lucky enough to sign up for a 2 day 3 night guided wilderness walk, where we stayed in thatched huts with shared toilets and showers. Unlike driving around, the point of the wildlife walks was to understand the ecosystem and to be able to see things that you miss sticking to the roads. We were also looking forward to some excercise, as it felt like all we’d done since Kili was sit in buses and trains. Each morning we were woken at 4:30am and were walking by 5:30am, in the cool 85 degree dawn. By the midmorning break at 8am, I was sweating so much I felt like I was slowly dissolving.
We were accompanied by one guide and one tracker, both carrying rifles capable of taking down an elephant. We learned a lot about the bush, observed interesting insects, frogs, birds, and learned to identify animal tracks and useful plants. One plant had leaves which contained a natural detergent, when rubbed together with water. Another plant, a large oblong, sharp, fleshy, scratchy leaf used to make rope was aptly named “Mother in law’s tongue”.
It was kind of like what I’d imagine being a boy scout would be. It was fun and educational, though I had a tough time especially the first day with the weather, climbing into and out of a steep gorge. When we finished the morning walk around noon, it was 97 degrees and full humidity. The area is mostly grasslands with some shrubs, so there was very little shade.
The most shocking thing we saw were the results of a poacher. We were walking and the ranger noticed a large group of vultures circling off in the distance. We walked across the flat grassy plain for about a km when the stench of rotting meat hit us. And then, in a small muddy clearing there was an enormous dark mass of flesh, a dead rhino lay upright on its knees. Its eyes were closed, and a large gash had ripped in its neck exposing spiky vertebrae. Besides the unnatural position it died in, the horn was missing, the surest sign of a poacher. The lions had done their job at the meat they could easily access, and the vultures and the flies were doing the rest, leaving the tough outer skin perfectly intact, but the insides eaten away.
The detective work by the ranger and the tracker was impressive, reading the scene as if it were written on paper. The rhino was killed by a poacher. Due to the tracks (aged to be from the last heavy rainfall on Saturday), there were at least 3 rhinos. One was injured, and ran and died in the spot we found it, collapsed on its knees. The others escaped, at least one of those were injured as well. The direction of the poacher’s footprints showed he came from the Mozambique border, only 4 km away, and he was likely alone. That the horn was removed at the base, where one only has to cut through flesh, instead of being hacked off by an axe showed he was a professional. He was also a good shot, as they only found one shell. Our ranger seemed sad and a bit resigned to the reality – he finds carcasses once every 2 months or so.
It was also a fascinating insight into the complex relationships between the various groups of people connected to wildlife in Africa. The poachers are usually poor villagers. It’s simple, they do it for the money, getting about $500 for a horn. Poachers come over the border because even if they are caught, South Africa has to extradite them to Mozambique, where the penalties for poaching are minimal. They sell the horn and it goes up several layers of middlemen, ending up fetching about $200,000. To combat this, the government tries to go into the villages, and buy information with bags of millet and clothes, making being an informant a lucrative way to make a living.
The extraordinary thing we found out was that a rhino horn grows back. Like hair, the horn can be removed and a new one will grow in a few months. Jonathan, of course, ever the entrepreneur, immediately asked why no one was farming rhinos for their horns. It turns out there were people doing this, but it is illegal to trade the horns. If they allowed “farmed horns” to be traded, it would become impossible to track the movement of illegally obtained ones, one of few ways the government has of catching poachers.
I was really disturbed by the dead rhino, and torn between sympathizing with the conservationists and yet at the same time with the poachers, seeking to provide food and clothing for their family. Walking through Kruger, it seems as though life is so abundant, and the boundaries limitless. The tensions between the needs of humans lives and animal lives, conservationists and poachers, life and death, are ever present.