Gabriel M. Ortega Photography + Multimedia

My first post on Entabeni may have left the sensation that all was good in the Bush Eden, but even that little slice of paradise deals continually with issues ranging from the transition of old agricultural fields to a managed wildlife reserve as well as larger and serious problems such as poaching.

As subtle as it may seem to the untrained eye, wildlife management is quite interesting once you learn to read the landscape and see where the work is being done. Entabeni employs Leonard Bruyns, an ecologist, to perform such tasks as transitioning fields of bankrupt bush to fields of edible grass for the various herbivores that live on the land. Bankrupt bush or slangbos (Seriphium plumosum), so called because of its difficulty in eradication thus scaring farmers for bankruptcy, is a stubborn plant that no animal will touch. Leonard is in the process of experimenting with various methods to get rid of it, ranging from the use of expensive and cheap pesticides, to placing salt licks for herbivores to trample it, to controlled burns and even manual removal of bankrupt bush and root systems. Obviously, the idea is to find the right balance between cost and efficiency.

However, the most pressing problem for Entabeni is the constant danger of poaching — of flora and fauna alike — and adopting security measures to prevent this from happening. Early on in the course, everyone was alerted to be on the lookout for unidentified aircraft, usually helicopters that may fly overhead. Since Entabeni features a luxurious golf course with a helicopter service, we quickly learned how to identify this local helicopter that occasionally flew by. But at any given time, the thump-thump sounds of distant helicopters caused us to perk up our ears and almost literally drop what we were doing to attempt to catch a glimpse of the aircraft.

Photo by Glenn Fleishman via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennf/20342176

Most people associate poaching with large exotic game animals though there also exists poaching of plants, as well seen and felt in Entabeni, where the very rare Eugene Maris cycads faces constant threat of being cut down and smuggled away. The cycad is a group of plants whose ancestors date back to at least 250 million years and many of the world’s species of cycads are under serious threat of extinction. Unfortunately, we were only able to see a few cycads from afar with the class, so I have no pictures of these magnificent plants.

Meanwhile, rhinoceros poaching in southern Africa is a definite and real problem that has recently been on the rise lately after a time of relative submission. At the time of this writing, 209 rhinoceros have been killed in South Africa this year alone in the name of stealing the horn which is exceedingly valuable in its principal market of China for supposed medicinal and ritual uses. In neighboring Botswana, the current president Ian Khama and his father Seretse Khama, the ex-president, have long had a passion for conservation and have thus employed the military in all-out war against the illegal poaching of wildlife. Through the Botswana Defense Force, poaching has decreased, unlike in South Africa, where anti-poaching units are only part of a small solution to a much bigger problem. Conflicting legislature in South Africa also permits poachers to find legal loopholes in everything from legitimate hunting and purchase of wildlife to using diplomatic immunity as a way of smuggling out exotic wildlife.

Thus, there are a variety of anti-poaching methods including de-horning rhinos and publicizing it so that potential poachers will know it’s not worth it as well as hiring anti-poaching units and even the most basic option of just not having rhinos. As hard to believe as it may be, even de-horned rhinos have been poached, just to get that last bit of horn, revealing just how desperate the poaching industry is to attain them. Legally, anti-poaching units must present evidence of poaching activity if they find a poacher. What’s surprising is that the poacher cannot be shot or killed on site, as in countries like Kenya.

Unfortunately, the poaching business is also a dirty trade for the poachers on the ground, since many of them are paid a mere fraction of what the horn is valued on the market and most of them accept this easy money because they have families to support and children to feed. The middlemen and the bosses are the key players in this illicit trade, though as long as they can send out dispensable men to the field, taking them out proves to be almost impossible.

As you may be able to tell, I’m quite interested in this topic and have begun research for use in future photojournalistic endeavors. I believe it’s a story that needs to be told and gotten out to the public. If every country in Africa that houses rhinos needs to have a hard-handed military approach like Botswana, I’d be for it.

Rhinos quickly became my favorite animal after spending time in the bush with these majestic animals. And after watching a presentation on poaching with graphic images of dead rhinos lying in pools of blood and orphaned baby rhinos standing next to their dead mothers, I felt a strong call to know more about this topic and see where I could contribute to the cause of saving these threatened animals.  I don’t want these wonderful beasts to meet the same fate of so many other animals that have met extinction. I don’t want the children of future generations to ask, “Daddy, what were rhinos like?”