■ Above: Night tracking in the tall grass and brush was extremely
dangerous.
The light from the moon silhouetted the twisted acacia trees
and we watched in silence as a lone bull elephant drifted by
us — a dark, silent shadow across the landscape.
We parked our Land Rover behind a heavy thicket and
some of the rangers went into the bush to scout for
poachers. We stayed behind with one dog and two men
waiting for the rangers to flush out any poachers. We sat
down on a fat log just outside the thicket and waited. Two
hours passed before the silence was broken by the radio
calling for us to come quickly. At that moment, we heard
rangers’ voices yelling in the darkness as we loaded into the
car and drove frantically toward the sounds. The terrain was
rough and rocky. We tore through the bushes, swerving to
avoid trees and an occasional zebra or wildebeest that was
dis-oriented by our headlights. When we broke out into the
open, we saw chaos unfold before us. Dust was flying and
armed rangers were running in every direction searching for
the fleeing poachers.
It is a common tactic for poachers to stop running and
drop into the tall grass. Sometimes they discard their
clothing and cover themselves with mud and grass to avoid
detection, making it nearly impossible for rangers to spot
them. That’s a perfect scenario for a K- 9 deployment, but
also makes it easy to run them over in a vehicle.
We continued to search in our vehicle, however, while
foot patrols searched around us. In spite of what appeared to
be chaos, the rangers managed to apprehend a poacher.
After another 30 minutes of searching, one of the K- 9
handlers, Mohamed, managed to capture another poacher.
The poacher had planted his spear in the ground facing
backward in the hope that his pursuer would fall on it. We
later recovered several
handmade spears and bows
and arrows, along with some
snares.
Linda Porter and John Lutenberg are former law-enforcement
officers and K- 9 handlers who now specialize in training trailing
dogs. They currently own and operate the Canine Training Academy
( www.caninetrainingacademy.com), a tracking and trailing dog
school for law-enforcement officers.
