South Africa’s Cabinet has approved the relocation of rhinoceroses from the country’s Kruger National Park to secret sites both within in the country and across its borders to combat a surge in poaching.
Discussions with Botswana and Zambia have started, Edna Molewa, the country’s minister of environmental affairs, told reporters Tuesday in Pretoria, the South African capital.
South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos, is struggling to protect the pachyderms against poachers, many of whom stream across the border between Mozambique and Kruger armed with automatic rifles and night sights. So far this year, 638 rhinos have been poached in South Africa, almost two-thirds of them in Kruger, compared with a record 1,004 in all of last year.
