Eighteen zebras, which have been left to roam wild in a suburb of Buffalo City Metro, are now being hunted and skinned.
This was revealed to the Daily Dispatch by a local who asked to remain anonymous out of fear that the hunters would target him.
“After school, children from the ages of 12 to 16 come with about 40 hunting dogs to hunt the zebra, and on weekends the adults will come. They skin the zebra,” he said, explaining that the skin was worth thousands on the black market.
“The zebras wander from their original property because there is no water, facilities or adequate fencing to keep them there. There are zebras, springboks, elands and bushbuck,” said the long-time Amalinda farmer, who says he has watched the game being decimated over the years.
A Daily Dispatch team went on a 7km hike through bush and veld in search of the zebras. The team came across dog prints, vehicle tracks and dug-up property fence posts which the farmer pointed to as proof of hunting.
Eventually the team came across two groups of zebra split into 11 and seven. The team was told this was due to the “stallions” not getting along with one another and so herds would split if there were too many of them.
While to the untrained eyes of the team the animals looked healthy, the farmer said they appeared to be sick, and that only one of every five or six foals would reach adulthood.
Allen Westerberg, manager of the East London SPCA, said they were aware of zebra being in the Amalinda Forest, which used to be the Amalinda Nature Reserve, but not of the fact that they were being hunted.
“I have spoken to nature conservation in the past and was told to just leave them as they are living just like they would in the wild,” said Westerberg.
Samkelo Ngwenya, BCM spokesman, said BCM was not aware of the zebras and that they did not belong to the municipality, but that BCM did have the right to impound them if they were being kept without a permit. —
tylerr@dispatch.co.za
Roaming zebras hunted for their skin in Amalinda
This was revealed to the Daily Dispatch by a local who asked to remain anonymous out of fear that the hunters would target him.
“After school, children from the ages of 12 to 16 come with about 40 hunting dogs to hunt the zebra, and on weekends the adults will come. They skin the zebra,” he said, explaining that the skin was worth thousands on the black market.
“The zebras wander from their original property because there is no water, facilities or adequate fencing to keep them there. There are zebras, springboks, elands and bushbuck,” said the long-time Amalinda farmer, who says he has watched the game being decimated over the years.
A Daily Dispatch team went on a 7km hike through bush and veld in search of the zebras. The team came across dog prints, vehicle tracks and dug-up property fence posts which the farmer pointed to as proof of hunting.
Eventually the team came across two groups of zebra split into 11 and seven. The team was told this was due to the “stallions” not getting along with one another and so herds would split if there were too many of them.
While to the untrained eyes of the team the animals looked healthy, the farmer said they appeared to be sick, and that only one of every five or six foals would reach adulthood.
Allen Westerberg, manager of the East London SPCA, said they were aware of zebra being in the Amalinda Forest, which used to be the Amalinda Nature Reserve, but not of the fact that they were being hunted.
“I have spoken to nature conservation in the past and was told to just leave them as they are living just like they would in the wild,” said Westerberg.
Samkelo Ngwenya, BCM spokesman, said BCM was not aware of the zebras and that they did not belong to the municipality, but that BCM did have the right to impound them if they were being kept without a permit. —
tylerr@dispatch.co.za
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