K9s IN THE FIGHT AGAINST POACHING
K9s IN THE FIGHT AGAINST POACHING
I J Larivers
(This article was originally published in South Africa's MAN Magnum magazine in February of 2017)
Very often, especially on social media, there is a call for “new measures” to combat one or other poaching atrocity that has just occurred.
The problem with CITES and other policy-makers is that poaching and trafficking are already illegal so passing more laws or revising policies on paper won't really do anything. The key to most successful operations is intelligence, and that costs money. Money to pay confidential informants, so that local villagers will realise that there is money to be made - safely - from selling out their friends and neighbours the poachers and the traffickers. Funding is what will make a difference, especially buying information and paying for a working informer network. Trouble is, the majority of the Cecil-lovers out there are nought but keyboard warriors. The 21st century breed of "conservationist" whose conscience is assuaged and who can feel really great about themselves simply by hitting a "like" button from half a world away, no muss, no fuss. What is the strength of their convictions, in dollars and cents? This is the reservoir that needs to be tapped in order to make a difference.
In southern Africa, there are real conservationists, who don’t mind getting their hands dirty and their boots on the ground, and they are behind places like the Save Valley and Bubye Valley conservancies, and the myriad private-sector anti-poaching initiatives which are currently helping to stem the poaching and illegal trafficking tides. These folks need financing to do a job they care about and that the government no longer either has the resources - or perhaps the inclination - to tackle. They no doubt wondered about a world gone mad when the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force in 2015 attempted to solicit $30,000 in donor funds for a bronze statue of Cecil the Lion to be erected at the entrance to Hwange National Park. Mercifully the statue was put on hold when the funding wasn’t forthcoming, but at a time when Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project was announcing a reward of $400 – what they could afford - for information, think what the collective community of anti-poaching initiatives could have actually accomplished with $30,000.
In my book, good intelligence is first and foremost. Then you need meaningful penalties and sentencing and aggressive law enforcement. Those who cry “we need to do something more” are partly correct, but in most cases the laws are there, they just have to be vigorously applied. Most parks and conservancies have beefed up their boots-on-the-ground manpower thanks to private sector funding, but one avenue of action that is just currently taking off in Africa is the use of K9s. It is expensive to acquire and train dogs - and their handlers - to an appropriate standard, but the benefits can be enormous.
Ruger is a young Labrador retriever-German shepherd cross who has been making headlines in Zambia sniffing out ivory, firearms and ammunition. He was scouted and trained by Megan Parker, the director of research for Working Dogs for Conservation in Montana in the United States. She is a properly qualified conservation biologist - which most animal rights activists are not - and is very experienced at training detection dogs. Ruger is Zambia’s first anti-poaching K9, and is stationed adjacent to South Luangwa National Park where poaching is a serious threat to wildlife; it is his mandate to detect elephant ivory, rhino horns, bush-meat and arms and ammunition.
Megan Parker calls Ruger a “bad dog” but is quick to point out that bad dogs are the best for this type of work. He was very difficult to work with at first, but not giving up, Parker eventually teamed him with game scouts assigned to Delta Team, an anti-poaching unit funded by Zambia’s Wildlife Authority and the South Luangwa Conservation Society. For Ruger and for the scouts, it was a case of learning new tricks.
Dogs, of course, have much more finely-attuned senses than we do, and Ruger can conduct a vehicle search in minutes. (To put this in a perspective of sorts, a dog can detect a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a million gallons of water.) Having done more than my share of anti-poaching roadblocks in the past I can confirm that it could take me an hour or more to do the job properly. Ruger proved himself on the job when he singled out a particular vehicle. Initially no contraband was found, but in the end searchers uncovered a matchbox wrapped in plastic, which contained a single percussion cap used to set off the powder charge in a muzzle-loading musket. Good dog.
This sort of success among rural Africans is akin to witchcraft, which is still today a very real part of their lives. In one public demonstration held for government officials at a Zambian courthouse, a game scout carefully concealed a small piece of ivory - which it took Ruger under three minutes to uncover.
One of the things that makes K9 anti-poaching units costly is the fact that - like all special forces - the selection process is all-important. And Parker, and Pete Coppolillo the executive director at Working Dogs for Conservation, do not hold African village strains in high esteem; commercial kennels in Africa are more attuned to turning out security, not detection, dogs. Just about everyone in Africa today who is working with anti-poaching K9s is sourcing them from overseas. As for Ruger’s “bad dog” status, the 150 poachers and traffickers he has put behind bars to date will no doubt concur.
Craig Spencer, the head warden of South Africa's Balule Reserve relies heavily on Shaya, also a Belgian malanois, trained as a police dog in Germany and supplied by the Endangered Wildlife Trust and funded in part by by the German NGO Rettet Das Nas (loosely translated as "save the horn").
In Zimbabwe in 2015, professional hunter - just so we all stay clear on where the lion’s share of the real input comes from - Peter Fick of Pete Fick Safaris made an urgent appeal on behalf of Bubye Valley Conservancy on the Accurate Reloading forums for funding for, among other things, a K9 unit. One of the points Pete made was that properly trained anti-poaching dogs could be used all around the country when not specifically employed in the conservancy. Clearly, there is a clear and present need for this type of “technology”, especially given Bubye Valley’s 2015 loss of three times as many rhino as in the previous year (Bubye Valley is home to a third of the world’s remaining black rhino population).
Black rhinos are a critically endangered species that in most cases cannot be hunted, and there are very limited returns from photographic safaris in most of Zimbabwe. For now, anyway. It follows that the conservation of the rhinoceros comes at a huge cost. As Bubye Valley says:
Ngulube is a Belgian malinois who knows more about what’s going on in his area of the Kruger National Park in South Africa than park staff who have spent decades there - and he “sees” most of it through his nose. On any given day, he may be looking for traces of arms and ammunition - the nitrocellulose of gunpowder and microscopic traces perhaps of gun oil. (I was once singled out by a detection dog at Heathrow on my way to Iraq. I had 20 or so rolls of camera film, which like many explosives is also a form of cellulose and the dog was intrigued, to say the least.) The part of Ngulube’s brain that processes scent is forty times bigger than ours, and foxhounds Chico, Jetta and Kombi, sponsored by Unitrans Volkswagen in South Africa, can smell even better than he can. They can follow a scent trail that is hours old, and for many, many kilometres through the bush. These three are currently being trained to run loose, at a much faster pace than even rangers on horseback could move, directing in helicopter-borne QRFs. Dogs, drones, choppers - it’s all on the table, depending on how big your pocketbook is.
“Since accepting the responsibility for black rhinos, the Bubye Valley Conservancy has had to increase the size of its anti-poaching force by a factor of six! Not only were more personnel required, but they also had to be trained to deal with a whole new level of poacher; not the subsistence level snaring they were used to – but professional killers armed with automatic weapons. More vehicles were required, as was a specialised radio communication system, kit, weapons, and a full-time experienced anti-poaching manager to run and lead the team. This all costs a lot of money – and we are very grateful to organisations such as The Beit Trust and The Lowveld Rhino Trust, as well as many of clients and friends for stepping up and donating much needed equipment and funds. However, the annual running costs of the anti-poaching operation still amount to upwards of US$ 300,000 that the shareholders of the Bubye Valley Conservancy have to somehow find in the ever more difficult business environment that is trophy hunting – and with none of this money being generated by the rhinos themselves.” Notably, there is not a single big-time animal rights “charity” in sight when it comes to this kind of funding.
Bubye Valley’s plan was to initially acquire four Belgian malinois - the same breed the Secret Service uses to guard the White House (and so far, not one malinois has solicited a single Columbian prostitute or been found drunk on duty or left his collar in a washroom).
Because of the dogs’ acute senses, poaching gangs, who traditionally operate in hours of darkness will be unable to evade pursuit and capture. And being based near Matopos National Park - which has the government’s largest population of rhinos - together with a helicopter they will be available for QRF anywhere in the country.
The K9s will need an all-encompassing backup infrastructure - dedicated kennels and highly-trained handlers. Once this is in place, the dogs can be used for tracking, area searches, and vehicle and luggage searches. This all comes at a huge cost.
US$ 1,500 to set up a trust, so that transparent accounting procedures will be followed. $24,500 estimated for the construction of kennels. $3,000 for training equipment. $3,000 for veterinary supplies. $1,440 per annum per dog for basic life support. $31,200 for specialised trainers’ and handlers’ wages. $14,400 annually for life support for the trainer and handlers. $45,000 for a dedicated deployment vehicle, and $9,600 to run it for a year. An estimated $1,440 per year for office and administration costs. Do the maths and then think back to the “species that cannot generate its own revenue” part above.
In nearby Gonarezhou National Park Invictus K9 has set up their first anti-poaching dog units including two German shepherds Sammy and Roxy. It is certainly one of the new faces of anti-poaching.
I think that the majority of the keyboard warriors spoken of earlier are well-intentioned enough. It's just a question of harnessing that resource for something other than bronze statues of dead lions. (Or, as the Chinese recently offered, a new vehicle for Zimbabwe’s National Parks investigators - complete with realtime satellite tracking so that someone would know where they were at all times.)
The K9 initiative is one of the “new measures” that could really make a difference for African anti-poaching operations in the long run – not cheap, but relatively low-tech and sustainable over the long haul.
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