South Africa plans to present false evidence about enforcement in its game reserves in a bid to combat endemic wildlife poaching, a national park control firm said on Thursday.
Poachers, operating in collusion with rogue park employees, have decimated the country’s endangered rhino population in recent years.
To address the problem, South Africa’s national parks authority, SANParks, has followed a new polygraph testing policy for its employees, it announced Thursday.
The tests will be voluntary in the meantime, but “the goal is ultimately to make polygraph testing mandatory for certain categories of tasks,” SANParks said in a statement.
The policy approved in November is expected to take effect early next year, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said in a written reaction to the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party, which published the reaction on Wednesday.
“There are suspicions that some SANParks officials may have been corrupt,” Dave Bryant, the district attorney’s shadow environment minister, told AFP.
“It’s time for us to take active action and active action to solve this problem. “
SANParks chief executive Rey Thakhuli said the polygraph policy evolved after consulting with labor law experts.
“Therefore, it is vital to realize that the polygraph test is not the answer to save you or control the involvement of personnel in crime, but it is a tool that will need to be used as part of the toolkit and with a full perception of its benefits, however. also its limitations. Thakhuli said in a statement.
South Africa is home to nearly 80% of the world’s rhinos.
But it is also a hotspot for rhino poaching, driven by Asian demand, where horns are classically used for their intended healing effect.
About 470 rhinos were poached across the country between April 2021 and March 2022, according to government figures, a 16% increase from the past twelve months.
The famous Kruger National Park, a tourist charm on the border with Mozambique, has noticed that its rhino population has declined dramatically over the past decade and partly due to poaching.
The park’s estimated number in 2021 is 2,800 rhinos, about 70 percent less than 10,000 in 2008, according to official statistics from SANParks.
Last year, a suspected poacher was trampled and killed by a herd of elephants in the park. In 2019, a suspected rhino poacher in the same park was killed by an elephant before his body was eaten by lions.
Details of the new lie detector policy are being finalized.
Polygraph testing for SANParks staff was first introduced in 2016 as a pilot project. Last year, the Environment Ministry said 71 park officials had passed the test.
SANParks employs about 4,000 people, according to official figures.
Wildlife poaching is a persistent challenge in Africa, and has even been fatal to conservationists. Earlier this month, a higher court in Tanzania sentenced another 11 people to death for the 2017 killing of anti-poaching activist Wayne Lotter.
Krissie Clark, who worked with Lotter, told CBS News in 2019 that her colleague had won several death threats for his work.
“If we want to defeat this illegal wildlife trade, we want to target the blood supply; we want to prevent cash from being at the center of this crime,” Clark told CBS News.