Day Ten

No preamble for this one. Let’s get right into it.

Question one

December 2024 was a sad month for rhinoceroses in South Africa.
Which park saw 19 of its rhinos killed for their horns?

Quick and easy question. Searching for 19 rhinos killed south africa gave this article:

… Police in Mpumalanga are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of 19 rhino at the Kruger National Park….

Not the most fun news, but Kruger is the answer.

Question two

Taking a step back, the number of rhinos killed in South Africa in 2024 is significant, especially in one province.
In this province, how many rhinos were killed in 2017 and in 2023?

Some more sad questions. This article and the whole website really has some interesting stats that we can use to find which province had a significant number of poaching during 2024.

KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) remains the hardest-hit Province, although recent interventions, including dehorning have contributed to a reduction in poaching losses. Whilst dehorning alone is insufficient to protect rhino populations, this initiative combined with other efforts, has been crucial in achieving a poaching decline of nearly 30% in KZN compared to the previous year, with 232 rhinos poached in the province in 2024.

KwaZulu-Natal appears to be the province. So we’ll focus on that to add up the six years from 2017 to 2023.
This article on the same site shows that the number of Rhinos poached in 2017 in the KwaZulu-Natal park was 222. For 2018 we can use this article, which has a useful table confirming the earlier number of 222, and 142 for 2018.

After some further searching this page gives us an even better table, showing the number for KwaZulu-Natal from 2017 - 2021. Now we just need to find the numbers for 2022 and 2023.

It’s at this point I realized that I had read the question incorrectly. We’re not finding the total number of Rhinos poached from 2017 - 2023, just the numbers for 2017 and 2023. We know that the number from 2017 is 222 thanks to this article, and this government report shows us the final number for 2023, 325.

It’s a pretty sad challenge, but that’s all for day 10.