Skip to Content

14 February 2012

Media Release: Latest on Rhino Poaching in South Africa

The hardest hit areas continue to be the Kruger National Park (KNP) and Limpopo province with 26 and 13 rhinos poached in both areas respectively.

The CEO of SANParks, Dr David Mabunda, said “it is worrying that we are still losing such a high number of rhinos throughout the country. The most encouraging area in this whole saga is the increasing number of arrests and the steeper sentences that are being imposed on convicted criminals.”.

Conservation agencies and the police are seeing increasing cooperation from the public which has resulted in arrests in the KNP and some provinces being effective before the criminals even enter the parks. The difficulty is pinning a suspected criminal to the actual crime because we are dealing with very wily and sophisticated individuals.

Below are the current statistics for:

Poaching Stats for 2009 to 2012

South Africa 2009 2010 2011 2012
KNP 50 146 252 26
MNP 0 0 6 2
GP 7 15 9 0
LIM 16 52 74 13
MP 6 17 31 0
NW 10 57 21 4
EC 3 4 11 0
FS 2 3 4 0
KZN 28 38 34 6
WC 0 0 6 1
NC 0 1 0 0
Total 122 333 448 52

Arrest for 2010 to 2012

South Africa – Arrests 2012 2011 2010
KNP (KNP) 3 82 67
MNP 0 0 0
Gauteng (GP) 4 16 10
Mpumalanga (MP) 9 73 16
Eastern Cape (EC) 0 2 7
Limpopo (LP) 3 34 36
North West (NW) 10 21 2
Free State (FS) 0 0 0
KZN (KZN) 0 4 25
Western Cape (WC) 0 0 2
Northern Cape (NC) 1 0 0
Total 30 232 165

Issued by:
South African National Parks (SANParks)

Media enquiries:
wanda mkutshulwa – Head of Communications, SANParks
Tel: 012 426 5201, Cell: 082 908 2692, Email: [email protected]