Written by Elise Serfontein, February 2025

In response to the 2025 escalation of poaching in the Kruger National Park, and the fact that poaching groups are poised to do a lot of damage in the rest of the country this year.

This isn’t about rhinos. It’s about the people trying to save them.

It won’t be a lengthy, expertly written piece, or a scientific paper to prove the insane levels of stress they are under. It’s a cry for help from someone who sees what they are going through and doesn’t know what more to do anymore.

“People issues take priority over animals” we’re told.  Well, conservation is very much a people issue.

Spend hours following poacher tracks only to find they’re out the park. The same poachers you risked your life to arrest last week, now out on bail. The same poachers, killing rhinos again and again.

Get fresh rhino blood on your hands, a rhino you treated for bullet wounds last week, now killed by poachers and dead at your feet.

Pull the trigger, a mercy shot, for an animal lying paralysed with axe chops to its spine and horns cut off while fully conscious and alive.

Smell the stench of a rotting carcass in your nostrils for days.

Spend hours of productive work time sitting at court waiting to testify in cases that never finalise, the wheel of justice turning at snail pace in a system plagued by challenges.

Work without capacity, make miracles happen without operating budget, have work relationships with colleagues stretched beyond repair and morale hitting rock bottom.

Have management taking your head off for not doing better.

Do your level damn best, but be judged by the world for being useless, or corrupt.

Swallow the injustice of corrupt colleagues not being addressed with urgency.

Get shot at by poachers, some of whom have military backgrounds or are involved in aggressive crimes like vehicle hijacking and cash in transit heists.

Look a dying poacher in the eye because he aimed a weapon at your colleague, and you had no choice but to shoot back.

Have death inquests opened against you – and the ever-looming threat of murder charges – for just doing your job.

Have your wife and children threatened in their home and community by the syndicates.

Live all this, and so much more, day in and day out, for years.

Our rangers and enforcement officials don’t need to be told they are heroes. They just want to do their jobs. We’ve got to the stage where it’s no longer about better SOP’s, better security strategies, more meetings and think tanks. They’ve had 17 odd years of finetuning, adjusting and improving and they’ve done really well actually. 

Despite the whole world rallying to help and the amazing work being done by so many, rangers are actually still alone. Because those in high level government positions responsible to all of us as citizens to improve this situation need to be relentless (more so than the poachers) in their pursuit to establish solutions.

For so many years our collective language has been that this crisis is complex. The clever people have deep dived into the length and breadth of this to the point where things feel unwinnable. So how about we start simplifying and focus on what would make a difference RIGHT NOW.

Getting (and keeping) on top of the syndicates takes good old fashioned law enforcement. A handful of kingpins, poacher bosses and organisers are keeping our entire rhino conservation legacy hostage.  A dedicated, multi-agency task team to address them  would be a good start to stop a lot of the bleeding.

We, the public, need to stand by the ground teams. Without them on the frontlines, all will be lost.