Poachers bag more rhinos and elephants

Poaching in the country continues unabated as 8 more rhino carcasses were discovered in the country’s flagship wildlife conservation, Etosha National Park, during aerial patrols conducted between 23 and 25 June.

According to the Environment Ministry, with the recent discoveries this brings the total poached rhinos to 16 for this year and the same figure was also recorded for poached elephants.

The Environment Ministry’s Chief Public Relations Officer, Romeo Muyunda in a statement this week said after instituting the process of assessing the carcasses to establish the exact cause of death, the results indicated that 7 of the rhinos were poached while the one rhino died of natural causes.

“Poaching remains a big concern and tackling it remains priority for the Ministry of Environment and Tourism. In this regard we will do everything possible within the framework of our laws and policies to bring poaching under control as it robs the nation of valuables resources,” Muyunda said.

“The Ministry will continue with its efforts to strengthen effective crime prevention and law enforcement through coordinated and intergrated clusters of activities such as security planning, monitoring and adaptive management,” he added.

According to Muyunda the ministry has since intensified patrols in protected areas including their collaboration with the Namibian police, defence forces and other parties.

Meanwhile he said that investigations in these cases and other cases related to wildlife crimes are ongoing and the public has been urged to report an suspected cases of poaching and a reward of N$60,000 has been put forward for any information leading to the perpetrators arrests.