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Expert: Rhinos extinct in Mozambique
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia May 02, 2013 11:49am |
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| Category | News |
| Author | Michelle Faul |
| Media | Website - Yahoo News |
| News Date | Thursday, May 2, 2013 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Mozambique's rhinoceros population was wiped out more than a century ago by big game hunters. Reconstituted several years ago, it has again been driven to extinction, or to the brink of extinction, by poachers seeking their horns for sale in Asia.
A leading rhino expert told The Associated Press that the last rhino in the southern African nation has been killed. The warden in charge of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park — the only place where the horned behemoths lived in Mozambique — also says poachers have wiped out the last of the rhinos. Mozambique's conservation director believes a few may remain.
Elephants also could become extinct in Mozambique soon, the warden of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, Antonio Abacar, told AP. He said game rangers have been aiding poachers, and 30 of the park's 100 rangers will appear in court soon.
"We caught some of them red-handed while directing poachers to a rhino area," Abacar said.
A game ranger arrested for helping poachers in Mozambique's northern Niassa Game Reserve said on Mozambican Television TVM last week that he was paid 2,500 meticais (about $80) to direct poachers to areas with elephants and rhinos. Game rangers are paid between 2,000 and 3,000 meticais ($64 to $96) a month.
While guilty rangers will lose their jobs, the courts serve as little deterrent to the poachers: killing wildlife and trading in illegal rhino horn and elephant tusks are only misdemeanors in Mozambique.
"Their legal system is far from adequate and an individual found guilty is given a slap on the wrist and then they say 'OK. Give me my horn back,'" said Michael H. Knight, chairman of the African Rhino Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Species Survival Commission. |
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