I can only tell you what I personally observed during my safaris in East Africa during the 1980s and 1990s: poachers operating freely with the protection of corrupted government officials. Elephants and rhinos protected by guards armed with bolt-action rifles - until the guards were driven off by poachers armed with semi-automatic rifles, who then slaughtered the animals, took the horns and ivory, and left the carcasses to rot in the African sun.
The problem is real. Alarmist twaddle? No.
So in a country that can’t even begin to feed its citizens, let alone protect them, the government is paying people to run around and GUARD rhinos??? As ridiculous as poaching is, it occurs to me that a lot of dead pachyderms is a small price to pay for a lot of live people!
It sounds to me like your compassion is somewhat misplaced.
It is not alarmist at all. The indigenous “real” africans are doing their usual thing, ignoring any law that gets in their way.
Thinking that the prohibition on ivory trade makes this “twaddle” is like believing that immigration laws makes the fact of illegal immigrants “twaddle”.
Africa is and always will be a craphole and the ivory trade will persist as long as ivory is purchased on the black market in asian countries as aphrodisiacts. That’s where the demand is these days.