The Chief Executive Officer of South African National Parks (SANParks), Dr David Mabunda, announced that to date in 2011 South Africa has lost 71 rhinos to poachers.

"This figure encompasses fresh and old carcases which have been found in the various parks and nature reserves countrywide," said Dr Mabunda.

In the same period 64 suspected poachers have been arrested. In 2010 South Africa lost 333 rhinos and arrested 164 suspected poachers. The Kruger leads the way with 46 rhinos killed, which is around 33% of the total for 2010. But there are further worrying signs from the Eastern Cape which has lost 6 rhinos already this year, compared with just 4 in the whole of 2010.

KwaZulu Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the North West and Gauteng all appear to show marked improvements, and this may be tied in with the improved arrest rate in many of these areas.

The breakdown for poaching incidents in the last five years is as follows:

	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
KNP	10	36	50	146	46
GP	0	0	7	15	0
LIM	0	23	16	52	9
MP	3	2	6	17	1
NW	0	7	10	57	1
EC	0	1	3	4	6
FS	0	0	2	3	1
KZN	0	14	28	38	6
WC	0	0	0	0	1
NC	0	0	0	1	0
	13	83	122	333	71

"The assault on our rhino populations is devastating and as the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Ms Edna Molewa, announced last week that the time has come for the fight to be taken up by our neighbours", said Dr Mabunda.

The breakdown for arrests of suspected poachers is as follows:

South Africa	2011	2010
KNP (KNP)	32	67
Gauteng (GP)	4	9
Mpumalanga (MP)	4	16
Eastern Cape (EC)	0	7
Limpopo (LP)	7	36
North West (NW)	16	2
Free State (FS)	0	0
KZN (KZN)	1	25
Western Cape (WC)	0	2
Northern Cape (NC)	0	0
Total	64	164