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Anti-Poaching Project – Intelligence-Driven Solutions
The widely documented issue of Rhino poaching has been a significant problem in the Kruger National Park for decades, with numbers falling drastically since 2013 (by 60%). Recently, SANParks stated that there are only 3,529 white rhinos and 268 black rhinos left in Kruger National Park. The issue has been problematic to resolve due to, amongst, other factors, widespread corruption and it still continues at an alarming rate to this day.
Focus Group (then Focus Africa), in conjunction with local authorities, established a Joint Operations Centre (JOC) inside the Kruger National Park to manage and facilitate intelligence gathering operations on poachers inside the park. Furthermore, we developed a HUMINT network that gathered intelligence pertaining to suspects outside of the park, forming an understanding of their modus operandi, transporters, poaching groups, and clients.
Our team of information managers and analysts worked together to develop and understand the complex intelligence picture of the problem that resulted in a database of over 2600 profiled individuals, including previously unidentified role-players and political connections.
Working with local law enforcement, numerous operations were executed that led to over 60 arrests for the project, resulting in a decline in rhino poaching in 2016. However, as outlined in The Poachers Pipeline documentary, the contract was ended shortly after key information regarding the poaching pipeline itself was uncovered.