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Rhino drinking
With officials figures hard to come by and a change from regular monthly reports to 'quarterly or so' reports its difficult to find out the current situation on rhino poaching in South Africa. Even with reports and statistics now being published on a quarterly basis the South African government is still finding excuses not to publish the figures.

This is so with the first set of rhino poaching statistics due to be published for 2015. The press conference and publication due today has been postponed because the departments that were to be involved in the press conference had 'timetable clashes'.

With a current investigation going on that will probably lead to South Africa asking for a legal rhino horn trade market at next years CITES meeting it is obviously beneficial to cloud the waters where the scale of the poaching epidemic is concerned.

With official figures hard to come by then unofficial reports need to be used as an indication about the effectiveness of anti-poaching activities.

One of the unofficial statistics compiled on rhino poaching in South Africa is put together by OSCAP (Outraged Citizen Against Rhino Poaching) who have their own system in place to monitor rhino deaths and court cases.

While today's official rhino poaching figures have been postponed OSCAP have released their figures to South African newspaper The Citizen. OSACP figures show that in the first 3 months of 2015 365 rhinos have been killed for their horn.

This would indicate that the poaching trend continues upwards and unless something major happens then 2015 year figures will beat the record 2014 annual death of 1215.

Taking into account seasonal surges of rhino killings and the upward trend it is possible that 2015 will see over 1500 rhinos killed - our estimate based on OSCAP figures for the first quarter is that 1504 rhinos may be killed by the end of this year.

If OSCAP estimates are current then it offers a reason why the Environment ministry is so slow to publish official figures. A continuing increase in rhinos being killed will not help them in their arguments to initiate a legal trade in rhino horn.

Before the country can push for a highly-regulated trade in rhino horn it has to demonstrate that it can protect wild rhino from poaching to prevent illegal rhino horn entering the market.

Regular and consistent reporting of rhino poaching stats should be made so that the world fully understands the scale of the poaching problem and the threats faced by the species.

Source: The Citizen