Govt warns poachers
2003-02-18 13:58
Cape Town - Government is to get "very tough and very dangerous" with the syndicates and individuals responsible for the mass poaching of perlemoen (abalone) along South Africa's coast, Environmental Affairs Minister Valli Moosa warned on Tuesday.
Briefing the media and diplomats at parliament, he said a new strategy to halt the poaching, which experts have warned is close to wiping out the lucrative shellfish resource, would involve all security ministries.
Moosa also said his department was considering slapping a total ban on perlemoen fishing, but this was only a proposal and might be premature.
"We have not lost the battle, as yet, to regulate this thing," he said.
The legal total allowable catch (TAC) for perlemoen last year - as laid down by the department - was 431.5 tons.
The illegal catch may well have exceeded this figure. A total of 800 000 perlemoen were confiscated from poachers in 2002; double the amount seized the previous year.
The shellfish fetches as much as R1 000 a kilogram in the Far East, where it is a sought-after delicacy.
Moosa said he was giving "serious consideration" to removing what he called "all the big players" from the quota system.
This would see quotas going to "the small individual diver who lives along the coast, rather than to allocate a limited amount to the small person, and then some amount to big companies".
Last year, about 20% of the TAC was taken up by subsistence fishermen; the balance was allocated to commercial enterprises.
According to a ministry spokesperson, key elements of the new anti-poaching strategy would involve making more use of the elite Scorpions crime-fighting unit, and the prosecution of poachers in special environmental courts.
The first such court was recently established in the Western Cape coastal town of Hermanus.
Further details of the new plan were not available.
"We are still in discussion on exactly what steps we will take," the spokesperson said.
Moosa said the department was looking at extending a network of voluntary inspectors along South Africa's coastline.
It was also looking forward to deploying the first of three coastal protection vessels currently on order. Building of the first of these would start later this week, although delivery was expected to take two years.
On the armed and well-equipped poachers who in recent months have been observed brazenly diving for perlemoen within marine reserves off the Cape coast, Moosa said authorities were set to respond in kind.
"We are now going to be very tough and dangerous," he said.
- SAPA