While visitors to the Kruger Park were enjoying their peaceful festive season bush breaks, poachers were quietly mowing down rhinos within the Intensive Protection Zone. A staggering 27% of all rhinos poached in the Kruger National Park last year is understood to have been slaughtered in December. Three of these were slaughtered for their horns around Christmas, and another at New Year’s Eve, leaving two young calves orphaned. While the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment will only release its official tally for 2024 and the festive period in its next biannual national statistics report in February/March, Lowvelder has reliably learnt that the Kruger had lost about 70 rhinos to poaching last year, 19 of these killed in December.