Title: Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching
Author: John Hanks
Genre: Rhino Poaching
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Zebra Press
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781770227293 / ISBN 978-1-77022-729-3
Softcover, 15 x 23 cm, 336 pages, 8 pages of photographs
Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching is a timely book by John Hanks. The question of rhino poaching and how to deal with it is very much front of mind in todays world, and we often forget that this is not a phenomenon of the last few years but rather a problem experienced over decades. Poaching in East Africa almost wiped out the rhino population there back in the 1950s and huge credit is due, particularly, to the then Natal Parks Board for first preserving the species and then creating an environment for translocation and thus allowing the species numbers to grow. Today, bloody photographs of brutally slaughtered rhinos, some animals still mobile with horns hacked off, have provoked huge public concern. Even with public and government support, however, poaching incidents continue at an unprecedented rate. At the current poaching rate, it is expected that both species of rhino will be extinct in the wild by 2023. In Operation Lock, John Hanks sets out his extensive involvement in past efforts to identify who was involved in the poaching, and the difficulties and dangers of going down the clandestine route. This report cannot be said to have been an unqualified success, but at least something different was tried.
Abbreviations and acronyms
Foreword by Nicky Oppenheimer
Prologue
The scene is set
A move to the international stage
WWFs Rhino Strategy and its links to Operation Lock
Setting up Operation Lock
Five African presidents
Initiatives and obstruction
Operation Lock in action
Fault lines
Conflicts within World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
Crashing down
Trial by media
After Operation Lock
Responding to the criticism of Operation Lock
Rhino poaching: update on South Africa and Zimbabwe
Rhino conservation: lessons from Operation Lock
Strategies for reducing poaching and conserving rhinos in the wild
A legal trade in horn - an option for the future?
Appendix I: An understanding of the role and importance of CITES
Appendix II: TRAFFIC
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index