The wind picks up on the sea these late summer evenings, whipping up the waves. If one hopes  to navigate the Mediterranean with any safety in a small boat, it had best be before winter turns the water colder and rougher.

So this is a crucial time for those fleeing conflict and persecution back home – or simply wishing to feed a family – by crossing the Mediterranean and finding shelter in Europe.

Indeed it is crunch time for refugees everywhere as the spotlight is turned on them by the United Nations General Assembly starting in New York.

The bigoted Matteo Salvini , who aligned himself with United States President Donald Trump in making cruelty a policy for deterring migrants, has disappeared for now as Italy’s Interior Minister. 

The full effect of this has yet to be revealed.

But for now captains of rescue ships do not risk imprisonment by taking aboard those cynically thrown to their fate by people smugglers. 

Some relief then for those taking this route to Europe. Their numbers have dramatically diminished:About a tenth of the number crossing  three year ago. But the Mediterranean  claims proportionately more of their lives.

Thanks to the efforts of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, fewer of them will be taken to Libya where they face detention in appalling conditions or worse.

The country rendered ungovernable after the fall of Muammar Gadaffi is no longer an easy option for European countries trying to reduce the migrant wave.

This does not mean European countries will take appreciably more people from Africa and the Middle East.

No more than the United States will welcome those from Central and South American countries seeking safer, better lives.

Indeed, South Africa will not be able to take in all those Africans coming  across the Limpopo and the Kruger National Park.

One must hope an international understanding can be reached that there is a universal responsibility to provide a refuge.

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Sometimes, though the country’s animal wealth strikes with red-toothed and massive strength that can only serve to remind humans  of their vulnerability.

In the past week there have been at least two fatalities attributed to the Big Five – once the goal of big game hunters now reduced to the aspiration of game viewers.

And the King of Beasts has reminded South Africans why Lions dominate that quintet.

The incidents all centered on the Kruger National Park, a 19,485 square kilometer  game reserve the size of Israel stretching up South Africa’s north east along its borders with Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

It began with a 33-month-old toddler being mauled to death by a leopard at a workers compound in the south of the park.

Courtney Ntimane followed his father who went into his hut, leaving his son outside playing with his mother’s telephone.

The leopard climbed a tree and dropped into the compound where it grabbed Courtney and tried to jump back over the fence.

The horrified screams of the family caused it to drop the boy and flee.

Courtney’s father Isiah rushed him to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Rangers tracked and shot two leopards near the camp. They were an adult female with an empty gut and sub-adult female that had recently eaten an impala.

This raises the likelihood that the opportunistic attacker is still at large.

Leopards are rarely known to  attack adult humans but they will take their chances with children.

Last weekend a pride of 14 lions escaped from Kruger and took up at the Foskor Mine in Phalaborwa which is halfway up  the reserve on his western border.

The South African Parks Board at first denied that the lions had come from Kruger.

However, environmental specialists said there was no doubt about the origin of the big cats.

Local residents were not comforted by assurances that they were in no danger if they stayed inside until the lions returned to their normal habitat.

Eric Kgatla, a 45-year-old nightwatchman at the  Foskor Mine, was not able to find security behind a bolted door.

With the lions on the premises, he and his colleagues redoubled their vigilance.

On high alert, they were patrolling the area in the dark when he stumbled across a bull elephant that had come through the fence from Kruger.

Kgatla was trampled to death by the pachyderm.

Elephants have  been in the news in South Africa’s north-western neighbour of  Botswana where President Mokgweetsi Masisi has reinstated the right to hunt tuskers.

This has  incensed Mokgweetsi Masisi’s conservationist predecessor Ian Khama who banned the hunting and culling of elephants five years ago.

He maintains trophy hunters stimulate the  market for ivory that drives crime syndicates to poach more than 30,000 elephants a year for their tusks

Mokgweetsi argues that the national herd has grown above 130 000, which is a third of the elephants left on the African continent.

He says elephants have done millions of euros of crop damage and more importantly have killed at least 50 Botswana these past years.

There is weekly social media footage of ill-tempered elephants damaging the vehicles of game viewers in several national parks that have come too close, particularly to young bulls or males in must.

The elephant ranks fifth on the list of deadly African creatures.

That  roll is easily dominated by the anopheles mosquito that carries  death by malaria  to more than  more than 400 000 Africans a year.

The puff adder is second, killing 32 000 humans.

The giant hippopotamus kills the third-highest  number of  people in Africa followed by the lion, crocodile and buffalo.

Leopards  barely make the top ten.

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Molewa fell ill while accompanying Ramaphosa to China earlier this month. She died at a Pretoria Hospital, aged 61.

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The ruling African National Congress endorsed President Cyril Ramaphosa remarks that Edna Molewa’s death was a devastating loss. She was Water and Environmental Affairs Minister for eight years.

Opposition parties paid tribute to Molewa’s work protecting the environment and particularly in fighting the poaching of rhino and elephant.

The World Wildlife Fund paid tribute to her significant contribution to safeguarding the environment and noted that on her watch there had been a decline in rhino deaths these past three years.

Five years ago the WWF gave Molewa its highest honour, the Gift To The Earth Award.

Figures released in Friday showed 508 rhinos had been poached nationally between the beginning of the year and end of August, compared with 691 deaths  last year.

Elephants, however, are falling prey to poachers in greater numbers. 58 of the giant beast have been killed for their tusks in the Kruger National Park – South Africa largest game reserve – this year.

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Environment Minister Edna Molewa said the move by Chad and Gabon threatens South Africa’s lucrative market in the trophy hunting of  elephant and the sale of hides, hair and meat.

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The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species is debating a proposal that elephants in all African states to placed on CITES appendix 1 which would ban all trade in wild elephants.

Elephants in central, east and west Africa are already afforded this protection.

Southern elephants, however appear on CITES appendix which allows controlled hunting and sale of body parts excluding ivory.

(take in Edna clip here)

She says South Africa has an elephant population of 18 800, most of which live in Kruger National Park where their number have increase by 4,2% this past generation.

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Large mammal ecologist at the park Sam Ferreira says using war talk is counter-productive in the fight to stop poachers threatening the existence of elephants and other species.

It’s quite wrong to talk about declaring a war on poaching, Kruger National Park’s large mammal ecologist Sam Ferreira tells a side event at the conference of the parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.

Only the president can declare war.

Bellicose language, he says,  is hurting efforts to engage local communities in the fight to save the elephant and other species.

“Be careful what you say. War talk is making things difficult for us, no matter how strongly you feel,” he says.

Ferreira says war talk drives the debate into a them and us situation with struggling local communities pitted against financially more comfortable conservationists.

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Two thirds of the 1020 rhino illegally killed this year for their horns have died in this eastern park which is the size of Israel.

Rhino poaching in South Africa has reached record levels this year –triple the number of three years ago.

The animals are killed for their horn which is shipped mainly to Asia where gram for gram it is more valuable than platinum.

Made of keratin – the same substance as human finger nails – the horns are misguidedly believed to have medicinal properties.

South African authorities are cracking down on poaching which is killing rhinos faster than they can breed.

Some 164 suspected poachers have been arrested in Kruger Park in 2014, about 30 more than last year,

Rangers say the activity usually spikes midsummer when the foliage is at its thickest and rain covers poachers’ tracks.

They grimly refer to it has the Christmas rush for poachers.

They have increased patrols in the park and are moving the animals further away from the Mozambique border which many of the poachers cross.

The national parks service says the alleged poachers were killed in a series of shootouts.

Three others were wounded and arrested and six escaped.

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