BY STAFF REPORTER
Bhejane Trust rhino monitoring teams recently stumbled on 90 wire snares, industrial cables and food stuff in the Hwange National Park amid suspicions the items were suspected to be left by poachers in the Sinamatella area.
Trevor Lane, who is the founder of the organisation, said the poachers were suspected to be moving as a group after three spoors were tracked by the teams that noticed a large pile of ash, which proved to be an active poachers base with fresh coal on the ash pile.
” There were three fresh poachers’ spoors leaving the base heading further into the park, so the team tracked the spoor for most of the morning and found the poacher’s equipment hidden in a riverbed,” Lane said.
“They then ambushed the equipment thinking that the poachers would return soon to collect the stuff, however, they were there until well after sunset and eventually gave up as nobody had come to collect the equipment, and assumed the poachers had found their tracks and fled.”
Lane said the poachers abandoned 90 wire snares, two rolls of wire used as stays on electricity poles, five metre of industrial cable and 25 kg of mealie meal, among other things.
“The area is the same area where 26 poached impala and four kudu were found in a suspected poisoning incident towards the end of last year,” he revealed.
Meanwhile, on Thursday last week police in Victoria Falls arrested two men from Hwange who were found in possession of fresh elephant tusks measuring over 1.2 meters each.
They have since been taken to court.
Although during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the Hwange National Park did not record any poaching cases, concerns are raising over the current trends.