A Battle Without End

Stalking a bloody trail The midmorning stillness of the double-canopy forest was shattered by a fusillade of shots. Two park rangers staking out a dirty watering hole quickly picked up the bloody trail of a dying rhinoceros and the footprints of two tracking poachers. The stricken animal lumbered into a thicket of 14-foot-high combretum bush, where the poachers felled it with two final shots and began hacking at the prized horns. The thud of knives against horn masked the approach of the rangers, who tiptoed over a carpet of dry leaves to within 15 yards of the unsuspecting hunters and, without warning, opened fire. One poacher fell dead. The second scuttled behind the rhino and emptied a 30-clip magazine from his AK-47 assault rifle. The bullets flew harmlessly overhead, shredding the bushes. The rangers circled the clearing and shot the second poacher dead through the splayed legs of the fallen animal. ‘They are the enemy,’ recalled scout David Chipesi proudly, ‘and we destroyed them.’

The shootout in the Zambezi River valley two months ago was the most encouraging success Zimbabwe’s rangers have enjoyed in their shoot-on-sight battle against invading gangs of poachers from neighbouring Zambia. At stake is the survival of the world’s last great herd of black rhino. In just six years, two-thirds of Africa’s black rhino population has been destroyed. Lured by the soaring prices offered for rhino horn, poachers infiltrated every known rhino habitat. Today, fewer than 5,000 black rhinos have escaped the onslaught. In many parts of Africa the survivors are being herded behind electrified fences for their own protection. But the Zimbabwe Department of National Parks and Wildlife wants to defend a herd of some 750 to 1,000 animals on their own turf, in the wild. In early 1985 Operation Stronghold was launched.

‘Make no mistake: we are fighting a very nasty bush war here, with no quarter given,’ says Glenn Tatham, the chief warden of the region. He was speaking over the crackle of a battered radio, in the cluttered operations room of the Kapirinhengu ranger base camp, set in a clearing on the banks of the Zambezi. Across the several hundred yards of crocodile-infested river lay Zambia, sanctuary for the poachers who slip almost daily across the current in sleek banana boats and fade into the bush in search of instant fortunes.

Shoot on sight Poaching in the region began in earnest two years ago. Gangs numbering as many as 16 men and armed with the latest automatic weapons have killed 100 rhino since then. ‘They caught us with our pants down,’ admits 28-year-old Blodie Leathern, a senior ranger in the Operation Stronghold force. But now the rangers’ alert presence is paying off. Since Stronghold’s start, rangers have killed 13 poachers; 11 others have been captured. Tatham is unrepentant about his controversial shoot-on-sight policy. ‘It’s very difficult to arrest someone with a rifle who is prepared to shoot you,’ he said. ‘Unless they throw their guns up in the air and raise the white flag there is no chance we are going to try to reason with them and arrest them. We shoot first to protect our men. It is a sensitive subject – killing a man for killing an animal. Many people don’t agree with this policy. But as far as I’m concerned, killing an animal is no different than robbing a Barclays bank.’

Prime Minister Robert Mugabe has personally endorsed the harsh penalties for poaching, but he has not been able to spare much money for the operation. At any one time Tatham has fewer than 50 rangers in the field. Two-man patrols are often away from base camp for a month, covering as much as 15 miles on foot each day. Only five official vehicles patrol more than 3,800 square miles. But the anti-poaching effort has won valuable support from outside the country. The Foundation to Save African Endangered Wildlife (SAVE), a US-based volunteer organization, donated two bright red Yamaha dirt bikes, two single-engine airplanes, a tractor-trailer, tents and more than $100,000 worth of desperately needed radio equipment. Says SAVE president Ingrid Schroeder, ‘The Zimbabweans deserve all the help they can get.’

Ray Wilkinson and Marilyn Achiron

Newsweek

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