World News for Students of English

17-12-2014 15:00

South Africa is building an army of trained dogs in the hope that they could help defeat poachers, which are responsible for a record of 1,020 rhino deaths so far this year.

Despite using drones and more rangers for stronger surveillance, the South African Government is still desperately struggling to effectively curb cross-border rhino poaching.

“In the fight against rhino poaching, the dog’s nose has been proven invaluable in fighting poachers, where our human trackers which rely solely on their eyesight cannot see sport due to environmental condition, be that anything from vegetation or rocky outcrops. The dog’s sense of smell has proven superior in scenarios like that.”

South Africa currently has rhino population of about 20,000, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the wild rhino population worldwide. In the struggle to curb poachers coming from across the world to slaughter rhinos for their horns, South Africa has to relocate some of the animals to neighbouring countries where they face less attention from poachers.

Difficult words: defeat (stop), poacher (person who kills wild animals to collect their parts for profit), surveillance (act of watching for criminal activity), desperately (trying really hard), struggle (try hard), curb (control), cross-border (relating to activity across a border between two countries), invaluable (extremely useful), tracker (observer), solely (only), due to (because of), rocky outcrop (a pile of rocks), superior (much better), scenario (situation), slaughter (kill in a cruel way), relocate (move).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com