Cowboy Joe Braman’s pack dogs have helped South Africa’s Kruger law enforcement catch 145 poachers in a drive to end rhino poaching in Africa and save the species from extinction.
Kruger’s rangers and foxhounds were too slow to catch poachers near Kruger National Park, leading to many gun fights and rhino deaths, and few arrests. Around 8,000 rhinos in the country were poached between 2008 and 2018, with more than half killed in Kruger.
In search of a solution, the Southern African Wildlife College team first visited Braman in Refugio, Texas, inspired by the free-running hounds used in the state’s law enforcement to track down escaping inmates. They were so impressed at Braman’s handling of the pack dogs that they asked him to come down to Kruger to assess its K9 unit.
Braman, encouraged to save the endangered rhinos, asked fellow Texan dog trainer Zeke Ortiz to partner on the hound training program for Africa. The two men spent months training over a hundred hounds, many donated by Texas, shipping their best trained to South Africa.
The college explains that without dogs, enforcement teams on average catch 3 to 5 percent of poachers, but the new K9 unit increased the rate to a staggering 54 percent.
“To have the hounds catch numerous groups of poachers right out of the gate—it was such a massive affirmation of us being on the right track,” says Ivan Carter, whose foundation, the Ivan Carter Wildlife Conservation Alliance, helped finance the project.
