All-Women Anti-Poaching Team near South Africa’s Kruger Park Notch up More Awards

The crack all-women anti-poaching team the Black Mambas, who have helped reduce poaching in their territory near Kruger National Park by 75 percent, and their founder have won two of four prestigious awards at a world tourism conference in Johannesburg, once again highlighting their environmental successes.

At the African Resilience Summit, which was held yesterday as part of the World Tourism Conference, the Black Mambas won the “Resilience Through Cultural Diversity Award” and the team’s founder Craig Spencer, head warden at the private Balule Game Reserve, which shares an unfenced border with Kruger, won “Change Maker in Tourism Award.”

The Black Mambas, founded in 2013, consist of 14 women who live near the park. They track 126 kilometres of the park’s border, looking for snare traps, inspecting the electric border fence and searching cars. When they started, poaching for rhino horn and bushmeat in Balule was widespread, but their work has helped reduce poaching in the 230-square-kilometre reserve by 75 percent.

An article on the Black Mambas published today by the United Nations Environmental Programme’s website, said that the team tries to involve the local community as much as possible, to make them feel like they have an interest in what happens to the animals and in the reserve. Visits for locals are also organised.

“In 2013 when this project started, we used to come back from sweeps with 80 fresh snares,” Leitah Mkhabela, one of the Black Mambas, told the UN publication. “Today if we sweep the whole area we might come back with just five, some of which are old.”

The African Resilience Summit says it focuses “on key challenges for the 54 countries of the continent in differentiating themselves from the misconception of ‘Africa as a country.'”

In 2015, the Black Mambas were bestowed with UN Environment’s Champion of the Earth lifetime achievement award. In 2017 they won the Eco-Warrior Award.