Project Rhino K9 Unit: Defending African Wildlife

Dear friends and supporters

We are delighted to share a brief summary of our K9 team’s activities over the last three months, as the Unit has been incredibly busy in the Zululand landscape.  Not only does our K9 unit tackle wildlife crime, but also assists in the broader community to reduce crime in general.

Just in the last week the Project Rhino K9 unit was called out twice by the South African Police Service to assist in robberies in the Greater Hluhluwe Area.  The first was a robbery in Hluhluwe Town, upon which the K9's successfully tracked down two suspects close to the N2 highway where the robbers were apprehended. 

The second call from the South African Police Service was for the K9 team to assist with tracking down wildlife poachers on a game farm on the outskirts of Hluhluwe Town.  The K9's successfully followed the poachers’ tracks for over 7 kilometres and found items on the tracks such as a double barrel hunting rifle, hunting knives and axes.

Our K9 Unit has also been called out frequently to surrounding game reserves (private, community and government reserves) to assist the various reserves’ Anti-Poaching Units with wildlife crime incidences that occurred.  The K9’s are trained to fly in helicopters, which minimizes the time it takes the team to arrive at the scene of the crime, increasing the success rate in catching the perpetrators.

The Unit does not only respond to incidences, but are deployed on a daily basis to our Member Rhino reserves, where they do training with the various reserves Anti-Poaching Units.  They also do training exercises with the Project Rhino Air Wing to ensure that they are they are fully ready when an incident occurs.

Spook, our Dutch Sheppard puppy, who joined us as an eight-week old black ball of fluff, is officially in training and is currently busy with obedience training, imprinting training, ball drive training (basis of detection work) and prey drive training (basis of tracking work).  Her training will ensure that she is a dual purpose K9 with tracking and detection capabilities. Being based in Zululand at the moment, Spook is gaining valuable exposure to local working conditions, and is already confident around the varied scents and sounds found in the Zululand bush.

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to IFPCP our service provider, Alpha Security, WESSA Lowveld, MSD Animal Health, Mr Duncan Paul, Mr Michael Rea and Ms Sharon Hahn and OnePlan for your kind donations over the period – we would not be able to function without your support and generosity.

Links:

• Project Rhino K9 Unit