Snares on the increase
Dr Ulf Tubbesing and his team from Wildlife Vets Namibia had another incident on a plot at Brakwater last week where a warthog's snout has been trapped in a wire snare.“Luckily the plot owner called us quickly and we were able to help the mother pig who had four piglets before the wire cut into her skin. We sedated her and removed the snare. The wire left a mark, but it will go away in time,” Tubbesing said.
According to him, his team has freed five warthogs from wire snares in the past two years. “It's only people who care who let us know. The others release or shoot the pig. Many pigs are also not seen and die miserably. Wire snares and poaching are on the increase, not only in Windhoek but across the country. It's not people who are hungry, it's people who are paid to slaughter. Syndicates are behind the operations.”
He says he himself has also been struggling with poachers on his farm for the last few nights.
“In the last four days, I have come across four poached animals and those are just the ones we’ve found. We also came across a spot where a gemsbok had been slaughtered. It's three to four men hunting with dogs and assegais. They can’t finish eating the gemsbok at once and be hungry again the next night and come hunting again. They are paid to slaughter.”
Tubbesing is of the opinion that poaching is on the rise nationwide and several factors play a role.
One is rising unemployment which causes people to set traps and hunt illegally. This is because there is always someone who will buy the meat. Then there are more and more people addicted to drugs and the syndicates use them to exchange meat for drugs.
“That's why we developed the Animal Crime Scene course to train farmers and anyone who comes into contact with poaching scenes to collect the evidence correctly. We encourage people to lodge a complaint with the police, even if they do not know who the poacher is. If someone is caught and the collected evidence shows that it is the same person, then instead of one charge, four or five charges can be laid against him, which will hopefully make the case stronger.”
Two weeks ago, a horse was stolen from the farm Elisenheim and slaughtered in the mountains at the informal settlement Okahandja Park. Poaching is also on the rise in the Daan Viljoen Game Reserve and plot and farm dwellers in the Windhoek area are increasingly running under poachers and traps.