South African National Parks (SANParks) is developing and rolling out an electronic crime incident reporting system, which will be centralised in a database at its corporate services office, in Skukuza.
The system will be used to capture all poaching information across the South African reserves.
In response to a question posed by the Democratic Alliance, in the National Assembly, minister of environmental affairs and tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said: "The electronic template has already been finalised to capture all relevant information required for statistical purposes."
According to SANParks head of communications Wanda Mkutshulwa, a fully functional system will be in place by the end of March. The database is intended to facilitate the identification of high-risk crime hotspots within national parks, she explains. "It will no doubt act as a vital tool to planning necessary risk mitigation strategies and tactical operations needed to combat poaching."
The template for data input has been distributed to the various parks and management has started logging the number of poached animals. The written response by Van Schalkwyk states 17 white rhino, one elephant, 11 buffalo and one lion had been poached across the South African parks over the last financial year.
"On a national scale and at any one time, the database will provide us with an open window on all crime-related incident information that is occurring in our national parks. This will make it easier for SANParks Specialised Corporate Services to supply executive management and all other relevant stakeholders with accurate and up to date statistics at the press of a button," says Mkutshulwa.
SANParks recently upgraded its Web site to accommodate a new online billing system, which the organisation says it is using to compete effectively with tourism businesses across the world.
Part of that competitive strategy is the ability to track the pages visited on the site and which forum topics are popular, explains Mkutshulwa. She says the online booking and forum solution enables SANParks to track the popularity of the various parks.
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