Tourism fund key in fight to save rhino?

[Toko]

http://www.iol.co.za/travel/travel-news ... g6KMfntmko

Tourism fund key in fight to save rhino

October 2 2015 at 08:42am
By Helen Bamford


Cape Town - A tourism conservation fund has been proposed as a way to help fund the war on rhino poaching syndicates with estimates that it could generate up to R1-billion a year.

It is one of several proposals contained in an integrated rhino poaching strategy dubbed “The Plan”, which was drawn up by economist Dawie Roodt, conservationist Braam Malherbe, retired safari operator Colin Bell and Ian Michler, a conservationist in the safari sector who were brought together by Advocate Paul Hoffman, SC, from the Institute of Accountability.

The four, who have different stances on whether rhino horn should be traded, put aside their differences to focus on pragmatic ways to save the species, and unveiled their Plan at the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday.

They believe the most effective way of raising funds without trading rhino horn, which is “unlikely to be legalised”, is with a voluntary contribution from tourists.

Bell said the idea was to take a portion of every guest’s revenue and create a voluntary conservation contribution.

“If we have 50 percent sign up we can get in excess of R500-million a year and grow that to R1bn through proper marketing.”

He said the plan was to have an advisory board – a mixture of private sector, NGOs, and also SANParks, CapeNature and conservation bodies – which would determine how the money would be spent.

“It’s not a pipe dream. We have already raised funds to run it for two years with top people and it will be rolled out before Christmas.”

Roodt agreed that a tourist “levy” was the best solution to fund such a programme and also to attract more tourists to the country.

He said that the contribution of tourism to South Africa was just over R100bn, roughly a contribution of about three percent to the economy.

But in countries like Kenya, tourism contributed in excess of 10 percent to their economy.

“I know we are trying to undermine tourism with these new visa regulations but if we could somehow do what the Kenyans are doing and get tourism up to 10 percent it would mean an additional R300bn or more, which could easily be an extra half a million jobs.

Michler said that given that it was highly unlikely for the current law on trade in rhino horn to be changed, the Plan was a rational and realistic new governing policy for rhino.

The money raised would be used to beef up security and buy equipment, while increasing training for rangers.

Malherbe said he had delivered a letter to the ministers of Environmental Affairs, Police, Justice and the SANDF asking for the rules of engagement to be changed in the Kruger National Park to “allow the rangers and all law enforcement agencies to do whatever is deemed necessary to apprehend poachers”.

The funds generated could also be used on technology, including systems to track satellite and cellphone calls and a “Threatstalker” – developed in the US to protect troops – which was able to track people’s movements up to 12km away.

Cape Argus

[Lisbeth]

In my opinion it is not the money that are missing

[Flutterby]

So much money has been thrown at this crisis already without any obvious success!