South Africa, Mozambique reach deal to fight rhino poaching

South Africa signed an anti-poachingagreement on Thursday with neighbouring Mozambique, a major transit route forrhino horn trafficked to Asia.Mozambique is a prime source of illegal hunters hired and armed by transnationalcrime syndicates to cross the border into South Africa to kill the huge, prehistoricbeasts.South Africa's Kruger National Park shares a long border with Mozambique and hasborne the brunt of rhino poaching in recent years.So far this year a total 293 rhino have been killed in South Africa with nearly half ofthe attacks in the Kruger Park, despite the deployment of troops to protect them.The agreement "entails us working together with Mozambique to eradicate rhinopoaching... so that Mozambique is not used as a transit country," Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa told AFP.The two countries agreed to share intelligence and jointly develop anti-poachingtechnology and education programmes.Rhino horns are prized as a status symbol in Asia and mistakenly thought topossess medicinal properties to cure cancers and hangovers, even though they arecomposed of the same material as fingernails.The poachers kill the rhinos with semi-automatic rifles, hack off the horns forshipment to Asia and cross back into Mozambique, leaving the bodies to rot.Mozambique early this month approved a law that will impose heavy penalties ofup to 12 years on anybody convicted of rhino poaching. "Previous laws did not penalise poaching, but we think this law will discourageMozambicans who are involved in poaching," Mozambique's Tourism MinisterCarvalho Muaria said at a ceremony to sign the agreement inside the KrugerNational Park.At least 46 Mozambicans, five of them policemen, have been arrested inside theirnative country this year alone for poaching.Mozambique has also started relocating 1,250 families that were housed inside the Limpopo game park, which borders Kruger, and erected hundreds of kilometres offence between the two areas. South Africa is home to around 80 percent of the world's rhino population,estimated at more than 25,000.Most live in the vast Kruger Park, which is roughly the size of Israel.In 2007 only 13 rhinos were reported poached in South Africa, but since then thenumbers have increased exponentially every year.South Africa has hinted it is now considering legalising the rhino horn trade in anattempt to limit illegal demand, allowing the sale of horns from rhino that havedied of natural causes."Experts are working on structure to look at the stockpiles that we have and notbenefitting anybody, yet people are killing rhino for these horns that we haveelsewhere," said Molewa.It is a "proposal moving towards possible trade," she said, adding it could be one ofthe solutions to end the rhino slaughter."We do think that it could... just taking it from the lessons we have learnt from ivory.We did an ivory once-off sale" and elephant poaching has not been a problem since."We hope we'll be able to win this war," said Molewa.