Operation Lock and the war on Rhino poaching / John Hanks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hanks, John, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wildlife crimes--Africa, Southern.

Wildlife crimes.

Poaching--Africa, Southern.

Poaching.

Rhinoceroses--Effect of poaching on--Africa, Southern.

Rhinoceroses.

Rhinoceroses--Protection--Africa, Southern.

Wildlife conservation--Africa, Southern.

Wildlife conservation.

Southern Africa.

Physical Description:

xv, 298 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : colour illustrations, portraits (chiefly in colour) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cape Town, South Africa : Penguin Books, 2015.

Summary:

"The aggressive poaching of rhinos needs to be countered with equal aggression. So argued Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the founder president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), at a 1987 meeting with John Hanks, conservation expert and WWF's head in Africa. The result was Operation Lock, a secret initiative funded by Prince Bernhard and staffed by former SAS operatives. Operation Lock set up headquarters in Johannesburg and extended its reach into neighbouring states: Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland and Mozambique. Its operatives planned to train game rangers, to pose as rhino horn traders in order to entrap buyers, and to expose the kingpins who were driving the trade. It was a controversial approach, all the more because it was working within apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s. When the existence of the project was finally leaked, WWF denied any involvement, and John Hanks took the fall. In Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching, John Hanks finally tells the story of these explosive events from 25 years ago. As a leading international authority on conservation, he also deals with the scourge of rhino poaching up to the present, and gives powerful and controversial criticism of some of the current policies to curb poaching."--Back cover.

Contents:

1 The scene is set 1

2 A move to the international stage 16

3 WWF's Rhino Strategy and its links to Operation Lock 43

4 Setting up Operation Lock 56

5 Five African presidents 70

6 Initiatives and obstruction 92

7 Operation Lock in action 98

8 Fault lines 114

9 Conflicts within WWF 126

10 Crashing down 135

11 Trial by media 146

12 After Operation Lock 172

13 Responding to the criticism of Operation Lock 185

14 Rhino poaching: update on South Africa and Zimbabwe 195

15 Rhino conservation: lessons from Operation Lock 202

16 Strategies for reducing poaching and conserving rhinos in the wild 221

17 A legal trade in horn - an option for the future? 241.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781770227293

1770227296

9781770227309

177022730X

9781770227316

1770227318

OCLC:

910936774

Publisher Number:

99967933486