If you ever had the opportunity to visit Kruger National Park in South Africa, you realize how wonderful of a place it can be. It is one of the world’s largest game reserves and it is home to cheetahs, zebras, lions, elephants and rhinoceros. It is a wonderful place to visit and a great area where you can learn more about the world that we live on. Unfortunately, because of the animals that are inside the nature preserve, poachers also try to infiltrate to kill the elephants and rhinos.
Last Thursday, the remains of a suspected rhino poacher was found inside of the park. Rangers were told about the situation because the accomplices to the poacher were running back to the relatives and saying that the man had been trampled by elephants. It seems as if they had broken into the nature reserve to poach some animals and startled the elephants before they trampled him.
Tusks and horns go for very high prices on the black market. Those animals still have the ability to defend themselves.
When Rangers were searching for the remains so that the family could bury them, they were only able to find some tattered trousers and a human skull. It seems as if the lions in the park had eaten his remains before they got there. His accomplices, by the way, are in police custody and will be in court.
South Africa is having a poaching epidemic. 80% of the world’s rhino population is found in South Africa and last year alone, almost 770 rhinos were poached. 7000 have been killed in the last decade!
This is actually a situation that has happened before at Kruger. Last year in February, a poacher disappeared and they found his head after lions had eaten his body. At first, they thought it was a park ranger who was missing but he was found alive. That’s when they learned it was a poacher and later, they found a loaded rifle at the same place.
Loss of human life is always sad but it sounds like this guy had it coming.