AT THE END of 2021, a group of night poachers in a Mozambique national park—using torchlight to blind antelopes—were suddenly the ones left stunned in the dark. The poachers, local opportunists looking for bushmeat in the area’s savannahs, forests, and wetlands, are often able to kill hundreds of animals in one hunt with near impunity, using dogs to track and finish off their prey. They move with confidence because they can hear the noisy petrol motorbikes of the overstretched rangers from more than a mile away, enabling them not only to escape, but also to know where the park’s guardians are and hunt around them—easy enough to do in the thousands of square miles of terrain.
Not this time. A team of rangers silently moved in on their off-road ebikes, halting the hunt immediately. The nearly silent motor of the ebike—a factor that can make them an accident risk in the busy city—has become the surprise secret weapon for saving the world’s most endangered species.
“The petrol bikes we’ve used previously have all been loud, heavy, and expensive to keep running in these areas. These bikes are quiet, which makes it easier for us to approach poachers undetected,” says Mfana Xaba, anti-poaching team leader of Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC), a nonprofit organization based near South Africa’s Kruger National Park. It supplies trained rangers to 127 parks across Africa, including the one in Mozambique. (The exact locations where they are using the bikes is being kept secret, for fear of compromising the mission.)
Several poaching attempts have been stopped this year already, saving a variety of animals, including tiny antelopes—suni, red duikers, and blue duikers—which poachers kill in huge numbers for bushmeat. While these species are not classed as “at risk” themselves, they form an essential part of fragile ecosystems on which endangered animals rely, says Alan Gardiner, an ecology professor and head of the Applied Learning Unit at SAWC. “Suni and the other small antelope form prey items for many predators such as leopards, crowned eagles, and pythons, as well as influencing vegetation growth. When any species is impacted in a system it has a knock-on effect.”
“The previous petrol bikes were immensely problematic, and not just because of the noise,” “The petrol to power them has to be brought in using trucks or even helicopters, which is extremely inefficient. As you have to store gas in the jungle, the petrol can then be stolen either by poachers themselves or local people who need it.”
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