DINOKENG GAME RESERVE, South Africa (AP) — The Dinokeng Game Reserve in South Africa has a thriving rhino population, but their exact numbers and the details of the security operation that keeps them safe from poaching are closely guarded secrets.
They are the protocols that reserves with rhinos follow to ensure they're not the next target for poachers who still kill on average one rhino every day in South Africa for their horns despite decades of work to save the endangered species.
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Members of the public and volunteers participate in rhino tracking at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, northwest of Nakasongola, Uganda, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Rhinos rest under a tree at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, northwest of Nakasongola, Uganda, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Two rhinos rest under a tree at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, northwest of Nakasongola, Uganda, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Marius Fuls, left, a wildlife monitor, holds an antenna to locate rhinos at the Dinokeng Game Reserve near Hammanskraal, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)
Marais Fuls, left, a wildlife monitor, holds an antenna to locate rhinos at the Dinokeng Game Reserve near Hammanskraal, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)
A rhino is seen at the Dinokeng Game Reserve near Hammanskraal, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)
South Africa has the largest populations of both black and southern white rhinos of any country and sees itself as the custodian of the animals' future.
As conservationists mark World Rhino Day on Monday, South Africa remains in a constant and costly battle against poaching nearly 30 years after black rhinos were declared critically endangered, and more than a half-century since southern white rhinos were on the brink of extinction with just a few dozen left.
South Africa has more than 2,000 of the 6,700 black rhinos left in the wild or in reserves and 12,000-13,000 of the world's 15,000 remaining southern white rhinos, which are now listed as near threatened after a turnaround. Those two species are only found in the wild in Africa. South Africa has a pivotal place in saving them but also is the epicenter of rhino poaching that is linked to organized crime.
South Africa's rhinos are spread between government-run parks and private owners like Dinokeng.
The country has made marked progress in the last decade with that public-private collaboration, bringing the number of rhinos killed by poachers from well over 1,000 every year to 420 last year. Yet, 195 rhinos were killed by poachers in the first half of this year, according to the South African Environment Ministry, still one every day.
“Please do not tell a ranger that we’re not going to win this war,” said Marius Fuls, a wildlife monitor and ranger at Dinokeng. "If we as conservationists stop believing that we’re going to win this, then we have lost it. We’re the last thin green line between the extinction of rhinos.”
In South Africa and elsewhere, anti-poaching efforts now employ high-tech tactics to help rangers. Reserves are using drones, night surveillance equipment, radar technology, motion-sensing cameras and artificial intelligence. Rhinos at Dinokeng are fitted with tracking devices so rangers know where they are. Rangers also patrol with K-9 dog units.
Dinokeng has been successful in protecting its rhinos, but there is no letup. “It would be naive to think that poaching is not a threat even though we haven’t had incidents in many years," Fuls said. "Poaching is always a threat."
Some reserves continue to dehorn their rhinos to make them useless to poachers who kill them because of the high demand for rhino horn products for medicinal and other uses in parts of Asia. Studies indicate that rhino horn products sold through illegal markets sometimes fetch higher prices than gold.
The fight against poaching is always looking for new ways to stop rhinos being killed. This year, a group of scientists in South Africa working with the International Atomic Energy Agency launched a program to inject small amounts of radioactive material into rhinos' horns. The aim is to make them unsellable, but also detectable if they are smuggled through borders.
The scientists said the radioactive material does not harm the rhinos.
Conservationists are also moving rhinos to new areas in a repeat of South Africa's famous Operation Rhino of the 1960s. That operation was a reaction to the drastic situation of southern white rhinos, which were nearly extinct. It moved some of the last remaining white rhinos in eastern South Africa to other areas so they could be better protected and establish new breeding populations. It is credited with saving the southern white rhino.
Several conservation organizations are doing that again now, both in South Africa and elsewhere.
One of them is Peace Parks Foundation, which has sent nearly 50 black and white rhinos to the Zinave National Park in neighboring Mozambique, a reserve which was decimated by poaching.
The operation — expensive and complicated — has returned rhinos to Zinave for the first time in more than 40 years and the population is already growing, with eight rhino calves born there since the relocation, according to Peace Parks.
"It's been an incredible success story," said Gillian Rhodes, combating wildlife crime program manager at Peace Parks Foundation. But she added rhino poaching rates are still “devastating.”
Similar success in rhino conservation is reported elsewhere in Africa.
The east African nation of Uganda on Monday held its first-ever ceremony to name 17 rhino calves at a sanctuary, an event the head of the country's wildlife agency described as “a powerful statement that Uganda has chosen restoration over despair and resilience over loss.”
Rhinos were hunted to extinction in Uganda, but the species was reintroduced in 1996 and the country is now home to 50, said James Musinguzi, executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.
World Rhino Day was started in 2010 to raise awareness of the threat of poaching and habitat loss for all five of the world's rhino species. The other three, which are found in Asia, are in an even worse predicament. There are just over 4,000 greater one-horned rhinos, only around 50 Javan rhinos and less than 50 Sumatran rhinos left, according to the International Rhino Foundation's latest count.
Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.
AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
Members of the public and volunteers participate in rhino tracking at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, northwest of Nakasongola, Uganda, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Rhinos rest under a tree at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, northwest of Nakasongola, Uganda, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Two rhinos rest under a tree at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, northwest of Nakasongola, Uganda, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Marius Fuls, left, a wildlife monitor, holds an antenna to locate rhinos at the Dinokeng Game Reserve near Hammanskraal, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)
Marais Fuls, left, a wildlife monitor, holds an antenna to locate rhinos at the Dinokeng Game Reserve near Hammanskraal, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)
A rhino is seen at the Dinokeng Game Reserve near Hammanskraal, South Africa, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)
Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.
They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.
The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.
Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.
The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.
Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.
The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.
“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.
Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.
“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.
Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.
“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.
DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.
“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.
Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”
Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.
“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.
“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”
Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”
He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.
Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.
Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.
“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.
“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”
Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.
“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.
"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”
Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.
“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.
“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”
Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
