South Africa is building an army of trained
dogs in the hope they could help defeat poachers,
which are responsible for a record of 1,020
rhinos deaths so far this year.
Despite using drones and more rangers for
stronger surveillance, the South African government
is still desperately struggling to effectively
curb cross-border rhino poaching.
In the fight against rhino poaching, the dogs'
noses have been proved invaluable in finding
poachers, where our human trackers, which
rely solely on their eyesight, cannot see
spoor due to environmental conditions, be
that very thick vegetation or rocky outcrops.
The dogs' sense of smell has proven superior
in scenarios like that.
South Africa currently has a wild rhino population
of about 20,000, which accounts for about
80 per cent of the wild rhino population worldwide.
In the struggle to curb poachers coming from
across the world to slaughter rhinos for their
horns, South Africa has to relocate some of
the endangered animals to neighboring countries,
where they are face less attention from poachers.
