Traditional tracking skills join Kruger National Park’s rhino fight – Alex van den Heever (Tracker Academy)

Rangers are fighting an uphill battle against rhino poaching in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, poaching is expected to spike, as it did in 2024. Despite dehorning programmes and stronger arrests, convictions, and prosecutions, 35 rhinos were lost in the first weeks of 2025 alone. The pursuit by transnational syndicates remains relentless. To strengthen its response, SANParks has partnered with the Tracker Academy to retrain field rangers in advanced man‑tracking and bushcraft skills. Manager Alex van den Heever told BizNews the initiative is groundbreaking. The focus, he explained, is not on chasing poachers but on tracking the rhinos themselves and proactively protecting them before syndicates strike. It’s an approach that has been used before, but the Tracker Academy aims to embed it permanently in Kruger, a park whose rhino population has been decimated by poaching from 12,000 a decade ago to just 2,000 today..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Linda van Tilburg (00:01.895) The fight against poaching of white rhinos in the Kruger National Park of South Africa is a story of loss, with numbers declining since 2012, from around 12,000 to just over 2,000. In the first week of this year alone, 25 rhinos were poached. To strengthen its response, SANParks is mobilising new partnerships under what they call a Rhino Renaissance, working with the Tracker Academy. Well, joining us in the studio is General Manager and Trainer Alex van den Heever. Hi Alex, how are you? You are of course well known to BizNews because we covered those stories of you with Renias Mhlongo. Alex Van Den Heever (00:40.95) Yes indeed. Thanks Linda, thanks for having me back. Thank you. Nice to see you. Linda van Tilburg (00:45.767) So, tell us about this deal you have with SANParks. Alex Van Den Heever (00:49.666) Yeah, it's very interesting, Linda, and it's quite groundbreaking, actually. So Tracker Academy is an NGO that specialises in training of rural unemployed people in professional tracking skills and so we have recently signed a technical supply agreement with the Kruger National Park with SANParks to help them retrain their field rangers in advanced man-tracking skills and also bushcraft skills as one part of the agreement. Then secondly, we will in the future start to deploy our graduates, our Rhino Guardian graduates into the Kruger National Park as Rhino monitors to help collect data on the movements of rhino in that area. So, but I think it's important for us to understand who Tracker Academy is and I'll just give you a quick rundown if you don't mind. Tracker Academy, I arrived at Londolozi Game Reserve 30 years ago and I met a man called Renias Mkhlongo and he was assigned as quote unquote, my tracker. And he was born in the heart of what is today the Kruger National Park in 1963. And in 1995, when we were put together, he'd already been working at Londolozi for a long, long time. He was one of the trackers who led the team who habituated the now famous Leopards of Londolozi. And I didn't know it then, but I was being paired with one of the best in his field. And over the years, in about the mid-2000s, we'd now been working together for a long time, focusing on learning to track and tracking leopards for our guests and so on. We started to have a conversation about how do we ensure this ancient craft of tracking is not lost forever. And what I saw in Renias was different to any other tracker I'd ever worked with. He was often the guy late in the morning when everyone else had gone home for breakfast who was still tracking and finding the leopard that everyone else had given up on and his strike rate of finding, I must say tracking a leopard is not like tracking your dog on the beach. It is hugely complex. They tread incredibly lightly. They're very mercurial animals and to have the kind of strike rate, the success rate that Renias had was just incredible and we decided that we wanted to Alex Van Den Heever (03:14.998) start our own tracking school. At that time, there was no school dedicated to developing trackers, training trackers. And in those days, or up until the early 90s, most of the trackers that were employed in the safari industry were guys that had grown up as hunter-gatherers like Renias had, or cattle herders, and so on. But in many ways, because of apartheid, the legacy of apartheid and forced removals, and of course the worldwide trend of urbanisation, many of these people just didn't have the opportunity to learn tracking.And the only way to do it then was to formalise its training. So, in 2009, we resigned from our jobs at Londolozi together and we went into the chilly wind of unemployment with this dream to create a school that would create the next generation of Renias’s. And we went to America because that's where everyone told us the money was. And we spent the best part of a year in 2009, travelling around, teaching people tracking.We tracked grizzlies and jaguars and all kinds of animals there. And it was funding our passage to try and raise funding for our idea to start a tracking school. And I must say, by November of 2009, I was back in my hometown in Plettenberg Bay without a dollar to show for our efforts. People liked the stories of us nearly dying, but there was no one interested in funding a tracking school. And long story short, I meet Mrs. Gaynor Rupert, just totally coincidentally. And we get talking and she agrees to fund and found the Tracker Academy. And I was days away from telling Renias we must go and get our jobs back at Londolozi when we meet Gaynor and our dream is realised. And that was and in January of 2010, we opened the doors. There was no curriculum. There was no textbook. We were given a place at Samara in the Karoo by Mrs. Sarah Tompkins. And shortly afterwards, we opened a second base at our own old stomping ground in Londolozi. And that was 15 years ago. And over the ensuing period, we've trained 350 young men and women as professional trackers, all unemployed, many without hope, mostly living in villages around big wildlife areas like the Kruger National Park. but also right throughout Southern Africa, Botswana, Zambia, around the Okavango Delta. A statistic, Linda, I am most proud of is that since we began, we've trained 352 young men and women, of which 95 % are now working permanently in the conservation industry, either as trackers at lodges like Londolozi or in the anti-poaching area, the wildlife protection area. Four years ago, we decided to open up a dedicated division to teaching people not to necessarily only track animals but also human beings. And we employed a man called Amos Mzimba as our head trainer. Amos spent 27 years inside Kruger National Park. Confirmed by the leadership, he successfully tracked, found and arrested around 300 rhino poachers. So a mentor, a trainer, of his standing one you would struggle to find. And he is now the head trainer of our Rhino Guardian Programme. And then it all came together just a few months ago when we signed this technical supply arrangement with the Kruger National Park to help them with their training. So that's the background. We chose the hyena as our logo because the hyena is the greatest tracker in the animal kingdom. And it's all thanks to the inspiration of Renias Mkhlongo, our partnership and most importantly to Gaynor otherwise we would not be having the conversation we're having today. And so it's very exciting. It's an example of the ancient craft of tracking becoming relevant in the modern conservation efforts of protecting rhino and other endangered species. In many ways, it's an African solution to what is ostensibly an African problem. And it can be solved by the ordinary people living staring many of them, staring jealously through the high wire fences of the game reserves to become meaningfully involved. And I know there are other projects like this and we're not the only one, but we are super laser focused on the two factors. The one is investing in the human being that lives in villages where unemployment reaches 70 % and giving them a skill such that they can materially change the life circumstances of their lives and go and contribute to protecting wild animals and in this case rhinoceros which are in dire straits I'm sad to say. Linda van Tilburg (08:19.946) Can you give us an indication where the rhino in South Africa and particularly in the Kruger Park finds itself now with its rhino population Alex Van Den Heever (08:30.125) Well, as you mentioned in the beginning, the numbers were around 12,000 for Kruger. They're probably around 2,000 today. Most of the poaching activity comes from the eastern side, Mozambican nationals, but South Africans are involved too. And it's a problem of resources. I must say at the outset that there are very good people in leadership positions in the Kruger National Park. A person like Oscar Mthimkhulu, who's the managing executive of the Kruger, is a highly committed, experienced man who's committed his entire life to protecting our natural heritage. Dr. Danie Pienaar, Cathy Dreyer, the head ranger. These people wake up every single day; they work in the hot sun to protect our natural heritage. So, they're under siege. There's poverty all around the park. People are coming in. We're in December in a few weeks’ time and the poaching will spike like it did last year. The poachers are just like all of us. They want their bonuses. They want meat for their families coming to visit them from Johannesburg. They want money. And so the field rangers have their hands full now for the next two or three months. They are X number of poaching gangs operating in the Kruger at any one time and it's around the clock. And it's a case of resources. They need more boots on the ground, which they are getting. We are going to be helping with that through the Rhino Renaissance Foundation. We now getting resources together to try and raise the money to put more Tracker Academy graduates and other field rangers on the ground in specialist positions. One of the silver linings here is for the first time, the Kruger National Park management can now run polygraphs, which they are doing, and they are now able to dismiss people who have become implicated in the rhino poaching. A lot of it, as you can imagine, is coming from the inside, but it takes a long time, and it burns up hours and hours and hours of senior management's time to get a guy from failing a polygraph test to dismissing him or her. And it's entrenched, it's everywhere. So, they're up against it and we need South Africans, need corporate South Africa to come to the party. Rands are needed, resources are needed, expertise is needed, because they're doing their best in that park, I can tell you, but they need help. Linda van Tilburg (11:10.721) So, what difference do you guys think you could make by training this new generation of trackers? Alex Van Den Heever (11:18.721) Well, up until recently, when a new cohort of field rangers is required, they put out expression of interest and you get thousands of applications, you can imagine. They deal with boxes and boxes of applications that arrive at the various gates of Kruger. And then they've got to sift through that and then select them. And there's a very rigorous selection process that takes place. They then go to the Southern African Wildlife College, and they go through a six-week course there and then they are deployed. But you can imagine they deployed potentially two months from the time they've sent their application in and they're up against the grizzled, experienced men and women, mostly men frankly, from Mozambique who've operated their entire lives in the bush. They get there; they just can't match the skills of the poachers. So, our job is to help these field rangers, especially the younger ones. You can imagine all the field rangers of around 60 years of age are retiring. That's the mandatory age by which you must retire. They're retiring. They're the last generation that grew up learning to track and learning bushcraft skills. All the younger generations have kind of learnt on the job or are doing their best they can. And so we will focus now on helping them improve their man-tracking skills and their general bushcraft skills such that when they find sign of an incursion of an alleged poacher walking in the park that poacher must know somebody's on their tail somebody's coming to get them and yes they do use dogs the canines and they're very, very helpful but it's not an absolute when it starts to get dry or hot the dogs they're not as effective when there's moisture in the grass and when it's cooler. You need both. You need the skilled tracker who's professionally trained, working together with a good dog and a good relationship there. That's the best chance you have. And then of course you need technology. We need the thermal drones up such that when the shots go off at night, they can put a drone up and they can get onto those people quickly. It must become a hard place to come and they must know if they come in the Kruger, there's a good chance they're going to get caught. Right now, is not, it's a little bit of a free fall. Linda van Tilburg (13:55.36) So, what metrics would you eventually use to see whether you've actually shifted the dial on this problem that you've just sketched about Kruger National Park? Alex Van Den Heever (14:16.492) So, Kruger National Park is divided into these sections. So around about 20 sections of an average of around 100,000 hectares per section. Some sections are what we call hotspots, there's a lot of poaching activity, some are not. We want to go to those hotspots first. And that's where Kruger was already focusing their efforts. Their best field rangers are already there and sometimes sections help other sections and so on. But we know what kind of incursions we're having, we know how many rhino we're losing, and so there's an immediate metric there. If we can stop rhino losses in the first year in these hotspots, or certainly halve them, halve the losses at the very, very least, then we know we're succeeding. There's very clear data of what you know, how many rhinos are being lost, where they're being lost. And so the moment we come in and the moment you get training going and you get the rhino monitors, the rhino monitors are not field rangers. Our graduates will not operate to go after poachers. They will operate to go and find the rhino. Will proactively track the rhino and go and make sure and establish their condition, male, female, their position where their movements and so on. That is to collect data on what the rhino are doing, information on their behaviour. But also, it forms part of quite an effective advanced protection proactive because those poachers will soon know because the information is out there. The moment the helicopter takes off, the poacher knows somehow because of this corrupted situation we're dealing with. So, they will soon realise that there are already people tracking those rhinos. Right now, the field rangers are tracking the baddies. We need people to be tracking the rhino to proactively protect the rhino. It's worked in other countries in Rwanda, in Zambia with rhino populations there. It's rhino monitoring and that's a layer that has not been really used in Kruger which we will start to implement pretty soon. Linda van Tilburg (16:43.973) That sounds like a new approach to it?Alex Van Den Heever (16:46.592) Correct. It is a new approach. It's been known and it's been tried. They have made use of this approach in Addo Elephant National Park and on an ad hoc basis in Kruger. But we want to make this a far more permanent feature with numbers of rhino monitors. And to get eight rhino monitors going in Kruger National Park, we've just received five million rand from the TBCSA, the Tourism Business Council of South Africa. And that puts eight in the park. If we can do 16, 32, and so we go, it's a case of money. And so I'm unafraid to say, I'm asking your listeners to help us because we know we can make a difference. And as you say, we can move the dial on this problem. Linda van Tilburg (17:40.669) So how many people would you hope to eventually have in the park, trained by you? Alex Van Den Heever (17:45.962) By, well, okay, so there two things. The field rangers in the park, we will be reaching about 80 to 90 a year. Those are field rangers who are already in the park. They're gonna be coming to a base that we are busy establishing inside Kruger. And they will come on two-week interventions with us. And we will be training and evaluating them. They'll get a score for how well they did. There'll be a very detailed report on their man-tracking ability. And in a few months’ time, they'll come back. And we're going to start with the least experienced and we're going to place two trainers permanently in the park. And that's all they're going to do is work on the skill, the man-tracking skills of the incumbents. That's part one. Part two is what I've just been talking about, the rhino monitors. And I'd like to see two, 300 rhino monitors operating inside the park. In addition to the already 400 or so field rangers that are already operational inside Kruger. Linda van Tilburg (18:46.246) You've mentioned the problem of corruption and said SANPark is now using polygraphs. So how do you ensure that the rangers that you train, because they're going to have exceptionally valuable information for poachers, that they stay on the right side? Alex Van Den Heever (18:54.293) So, that's a very good question Linda and it's a hard one to be honest. We will polygraph them before they come that we polygraph them before they come to us. Then we polygraph them as they leave and then in their contract they agree to be continued to continually polygraph. But that doesn't solve the problem necessarily they do know a polygraph is coming and that's pretty good. That's we've noticed that it makes a big difference, but there's also the hearts and minds. There are also the elders getting involved and talking to these youngsters about how important it is that they see wildlife not as something that ends up in your pot, but that is, I'm speaking quite metaphorically here, but is your brother or your sister. And that that animal out there ultimately will help the future, their children, their children's children and so on. And there's a legacy to looking after African natural heritage. And that's a different, that's a much harder, there are no metrics to that. But we've done it pretty successfully with Tracker Academy. We have 352 of them out there. And we haven't had a single graduate in 15 years, implicated in rhino poaching. And I think that's it. And they with us for a year before we set them into the industry. But we stay in touch with them, and they do a lot of work with Dr. Ian McCallum, who's a well-known psychiatrist from Cape Town. He works with our students. He works individually with our students. As we're growing, it's going to be that he's going to have to work more with our trainers so that they can carry his narrative to the students so we can kind of scale his message. Because he’s done a fantastic job in getting people to understand that we are all part of nature and we've got to move away from this utilitarian kind of approach to what nature represents. Linda van Tilburg (21:04.101) Do you welcome the fact that SANParks is actually acknowledging that bringing in the private sector could really make a difference? Alex Van Den Heever (21:07.019) Yes, short answer to that is yes. They are understandably also sceptical. The private sector often arrives with alternate agendas, and they've been burnt a few times. So, I know in my own journey with national parks, it's been a long time to get and I'm not even sure that I'm there, a trusting relationship with them. Because at the end of the day, one of them that had slipped to me the other day, the private sector wants information, or they want to be able to stay in the park for free. There'll be some, there's some alternative motive going on. And so, they're sceptical and often the private sector come and they've got all the answers and then they leave and they leave the Kruger with the baby to look after. And so whatever happens, whoever comes on board must know that this is for the next 30 years. If we stop the poaching dead in Kruger today, it'll take 10 to 15 years to get back to 12,000. So, this is a long term, we've been hit really, really hard and it's an indictment on the human condition and where we find ourselves with these rhinos. They're a symbol for the poor state of our relationship with nature, frankly.

Traditional tracking skills join Kruger National Park’s rhino fight – Alex van den Heever (Tracker Academy)

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