Kruger National Park attributes drop in poaching incidents to increased security measures

Management at the Kruger National Park has attributed the decline of animal poaching incidents to its improved security techniques.

In the last financial year, the park has reported 180 cases of rhino poaching – this is a 45% decline compared to previous years.

The park has installed three security camera points in the park, with 12 more installations expected.

While the number of rhinos being poached annually has barely decreased, the Kruger National Park says its seen a significant decline in these cases.

The management has installed three camera systems in the park’s Marula South, where a large population of rhinos can be found.

These cameras are equipped with infrared technology to detect movement at night.

Vehicle registration detection cameras are connected to a police database to identify stolen or hijacked cars.

The park’s Sam Madalane said that this helps with detecting suspicious activity sooner.

“We get to pick up the trend of vehicle movement, we can pick up an illegal trend easy when the person is actually doing more movements at one place that we can actually deploy men that can go and investigate.”

The park now also has dogs that have been trained to find poachers, roaming the area.

Madalane said that the dogs run at speeds of at least 45 kilometres an hour, making it easier to trace and find poachers should they still be in the in the park.

The park plans on installing 12 more cameras to protect all the endangered animals.

-EWN

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