That’s prompted the country’s environment department to switch focus to the eastern Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve, a 96 000-hectare expanse of hills, from the much larger Kruger National Park, where years of intense poaching and an extended drought have decimated the rhino population — traditionally the world’s biggest.
While only 42 animals were killed in Kruger, which lies on South Africa’s eastern border, 143 were poached in KwaZulu-Natal, up from 33 in the same period two years ago, and 46 were poached in private reserves elsewhere.