Saving Private Rhino: We must reimagine the future of species conservation in South Africa

[Peter Betts]

10 yrs ago or so Hume's Facility near Hectorspruit was under severe investigation re Rhino Horn stuff = not a Conservationist at all >> Profit yes

[Lisbeth]

The global ban on the trade in rhino horn does not, and will not, work

By Jane Wiltshire | 02 May 2023, Jane Wiltshire is a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the African Wildlife Economics Institute at the University of Stellenbosch.

There were 29 rhino range states when the ban on trade in rhino horn was imposed in 1977. Today, only five range states remain with evolutionarily viable rhino populations.
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At the end of April 2023, the owner of the largest rhino herd in the world put his whole rhino breeding operation up for auction. Will John Hume find a philanthropic billionaire who will buy his 2,000 rhinos and shoulder the heavy burden of protecting them from poachers as well as providing them with habitat?

The conservation world is rightly concerned about the potential impact on rhino numbers if there is not a “happy ending” for Hume’s rhinos. But this is only a part of the tragedy that is playing itself out all the time in South Africa — the Private Rhino Owners’ Association’s Pelham Jones estimates that already 80 private rhino owners have ceased owning rhinos, decreasing the land available to rhinos in South Africa by 430,000 hectares.

The cost of protecting these rhinos is simply too much for most private custodians.

Read on Daily Maverick: Shaky future for 2,000 rhinos after mega-breeder’s auction fails to attract bidders

Demand for rhino horn for traditional medicine, status gifts, and jewellery continues to be high; the only way this demand can be satisfied is via the procurement of illegal, poached horns as there is currently a 46-year ban on the international sale of rhino horn, binding on South Africa.

Billions of dollars of donations have gone into diverse, innovative and intensive anti-poaching campaigns and well-crafted demand-reduction campaigns.

But still, the relentless slaughter of rhinos continues.

The demand for rhino horn seems not to respond to education campaigns, and the incentive for poaching to supply this demand is enormous.

Meanwhile, rhino custodians are prevented from utilising sales of their rhino horn stockpiles and regular poaching-prevention horn-trimming to raise funding for anti-poaching and conservation of rhinos by the ban on international trade in rhino horn.

Legalising the international sale of rhino horn would mean that proceeds from this permanent demand would sustain rhino custodians, contribute tax to the South African Revenue Service, drive the growth of rural economies and create employment opportunities.

State conservation would receive a greatly needed shot in the arm and could become viable and self-sustaining.

Ecological benefit

Importantly, trade would result in an overall ecological benefit. A growing rhino population means the area in which rhinos are kept will increase. This would drive an increase in protected areas and the biodiversity they contain.

In addition, legal trade in rhino horn has the potential to satisfy five to eight times as much demand as poaching from the same number of rhinos because:

• A rhino’s horn can be harvested sustainably without harming the animal in any way, making the horn a renewable resource; and

• An adult rhino can produce between 0.75 and 1.5kg of horn per year — between five and eight horn sets in a 45-year lifetime.

In 2016, the government considered the results of a commission of inquiry (COI) to deliberate on possible trade in rhino horn. The COI, comprised of 22 panel members and incorporating the input of a further 65 dedicated experts, lasted two years.

After considering the options presented, the Cabinet concluded: “By facilitating a legal and well-regulated trade, it will be possible to supply some of the demand … [for rhino horn] from legal sources and generate funds for the conservation of rhinos…” and further decided that “an effective trade model” be developed once “governance issues were addressed”.

Why has the government not implemented its decision based on this robust and rigorous process that it initiated and paid for? As we await implementation, the slaughter of our rhinos continues — 3,684 rhinos were reportedly poached between 2017 and 2022.

Unfortunately, the government is not the only decision-maker in this process. CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) determines the ability of member nations (parties) to trade in wildlife products. A change in the classification of the products from a particular species requires a vote of at least two-thirds of the 184 parties.

Only five parties currently have viable African rhino populations (range states), but their vote counts the same as the non-range states.

The parties (especially non-range states) are influenced by animal rights NGOs which argue that the “precautionary principle” (PP) must be applied to any decision to lift the ban. The PP states that “the Parties shall, by virtue of the precautionary approach and in case of uncertainty … [of] … the impact of trade on the conservation of a species, act in the best interest of the conservation of the species concerned”.

It is odd that CITES has taken this to mean that the ban should not be lifted. The ban has patently been deleterious to rhinos:

• There were 29 range states when the ban was imposed in 1977. Today, only five range states remain with evolutionarily viable rhino populations; and

• The population of rhinos in the Kruger National Park, formerly home to the largest population of rhinos in the world, dropped from 10,621 in 2011 to 2,607 in 2020.

Despite this incontrovertible evidence of the harm that has come to rhinos during the ban, there are still those who argue that a bit more time, more vigorous implementation of anti-poaching and/or more stringent police and judicial processes will somehow remedy the dire and deteriorating situation.

After 46 years, billions of dollars spent, hundreds of conservationists’ lives lost and thousands of rhinos poached, it is clear that the ban on trade in rhino horn does not and will not work.

As long as the ban is in place, rhino custodians will be lumbered with the unsustainable, unfunded burden of protecting them — our rhinos will cost too much to keep.

Why not lift this deplorable ban on trade and make our precious rhinos once again worth more alive than dead? DM

[Lisbeth]

The comments are almost the best

All Comments 11

James Larkin
2 May 2023 at 15:42
Dr Wilshire should perhaps look at the economics associated with the rhino horn trade. From the following paper, A Quantitative assessment of supply and demand in rhino horn and a case against trade. Dr Barbara Maas, published in about 2016 a number of calculations were carried out. The following is a brief summary.
“All of South Africa’s privately owned white rhinos put together only have enough horn to provide a single dose of 3, or 50 grams to 0.97%, or 0.06% of adults in Vietnam and China.
Rhino horn derived from annual dehorning could at best service 0.12%, and 0.007% of adults in these countries with the same prescriptions”.
“There are simply are not enough rhinos left left anywhere to satisfy the demand”.
“A well regulated trade, it will be possible to supply some of the demand”.. there in lies the rub, there are a number of examples of were the legal trade in wildlife has had undesirable consequences. Vicuña being one example, another is farmed bear bile. There is a strong preference in the user markets for the ‘wild-type’ product ( bear bile, rhino horn, etc) as it is believed to be more potent.
Legalising trade would vastly outstrip supply, because illegal rhino horn would continue to be laundered into legal flows, exacerbated by a continued market for rhino horn sourced from wild populations due to expressed consumer preferences. Lifting the ban will hasten the demise of rhinos across all range states”.
The figures speak for themselves, trade won’t work.

Reply
Charles Denison
2 May 2023 at 17:54
Instead of finding problems with other aspirations, why don’t you make a recommendation then James of what would work? What is your solution. As clearly 29 range states to 5 is a policy failure.

Reply
Zoe Lees Lees
2 May 2023 at 21:17
What about your suggestions Charles? Unfortunately numbers and theories still don’t recognise the fact that commoditizing wildlife or wildlife parts in the name of “sustainable use” only normalizes the practices and the consequence is that sentient beings are brutally exploited for cash. Their welfare and their ability to live a natural life is not even a factor, never mind the loss of biodiversity and our apex species. Some of the private rhino breeders, like John Hume, did not breed them for the love of rhino. John bet on the legalization of the trade so that he would have a stockpile to get wealthy. He (and people like the Groenewald brothers) have very likely been selling horn into the illegal trade for years – why else would he have pushed for horn to be traded “locally” – and then where would the horn go? Now he is crying foul because his gamble didn’t pay off, thereby creating a crisis. And who suffers the most ? Those poor rhino…mostly cows because mature bulls in close proximity to one another would kill each other as they are very territorial – so they get sold or shot – all in the name of “conserving the species”. Populations and genes are manipulated, and that is most definitely not conservation…the system is corrupt and that is enabling the poaching to continue and intensify. This is not about trade at all. It’s about money & a corrupt chain, just as we are seeing with all other natural resources which are being plundered with little intervention.

Reply
William Stucke
2 May 2023 at 22:21
Ooh! Did this comment pass the test of “Civil”?
Definitely actionable libel, IMHO.

And please explain, once you’ve got over your righteous indignation, how dehorned rhinos are “sentient beings (who) are brutally exploited for cash”?

Do you have a better suggestion? It’s clear that SANParks can’t protect rhinos. A few private individuals have been successful, But, it costs obscene amounts of money. R180,000 PER DAY in the article by Helena Kriel, also in DM.

Reply
Charles Denison
3 May 2023 at 08:20
My solution is clearly John’s solution. You don’t have one. Instead you decide to defame John Hume without providing any evidence. Unless you have evidence Dr Zoe Lees?

Reply
Luke Benincasa
3 May 2023 at 10:05
I think you all are sensible people who don’t want to see these giants go extinct in the wild.

Given the distastrous state of affairs we find ourselves in, could the solution not be to open the market to a regulated trade for, say five years and see if that would work? You are asking for solutions and ideas – here it is. A limited loosening up on the restrictions to see if a regulated market can stamp out an unregulated one.

The status quo does not work and regulated trade may work. We’ve got to try something…

William Stucke
2 May 2023 at 22:00
“There are simply are not enough rhinos left anywhere to satisfy the demand.”

Yes, and every day we listen to foolish people who publish meaningless statistics is another day that our rhino population decreases. How long until there are no rhino left? What then is the benefit of 46 years of a totally useless ban?

Did it work? No, it didn’t. Clear evidence has been presented in this article and many others. As is often (mis)attributed to Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Reply
Phil Baker
2 May 2023 at 18:50
There are many innovative protein synthesisers especially on the West coast USA who are producing chicken, beef , blue fin tuna and other commercial proteins that are nature identical – could they not be invited to produce Rhino Keratin or for that matter Donkey skin collagen and flood the market with identical product? Just a thought – we could even do it in SA?

Reply
Lisbeth Scalabrini
3 May 2023 at 11:31
Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.
It has been proposed and even tried before, I think, but the consumers do not want it. They want the “real thing”. There is even a difference between the horns of rhinos living in the wild and farmed ones.

jcdville@gmail.co.za stormers
2 May 2023 at 21:42
It won’t work only because humans can’t control themselves,and are selfish and money lovers,and governments are easy to bribe.

Reply
William Stucke
2 May 2023 at 21:53
The problem is clearly one of armchair conservationists. Emotion overtaking logic. Those 179 countries have no skin in the game at all. Their views should, therefore, be irrelevant.

Reply
Miles Japhet
3 May 2023 at 06:56
Dr Wiltshire is spot on. Sadly Rhinos have to become an asset and not a liability for landowners who have Rhino in their care, through making sale of their horn. It is no more complicated than that.
Arguments about supply and demand etc show a lack of understanding of the issue on the ground.
Dehorning Rhino, at great expense, has proved to be the only effective measure to prevent their death by poaching.

[Lisbeth]

Enforcing horn trade ban — the world needs to channel its inner rhino mom


Johan Hume’s rhinos roam around at his farm on 28 May 2016 in Klerksdorp, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Rapport / Deon Raath)

By Tracy Keeling | 10 Jul 2023

Claims that the global ban on the rhino horn trade cannot work ignore the fact that relevant parties haven’t yet made like a rhino mom and put their whole, unwavering weight behind the prohibition.
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When a rhino mom charges to protect her little one from a threat, she puts her all into it. Despite her poor eyesight, she rushes towards the danger with precision, placing her tanklike body between her young and the menace where possible. The no-holds-barred approach to saving her offspring leaves few would-be attackers unscathed.

This level of resolution has been largely lacking in the global (human) community’s efforts to enforce a ban on the trade in rhinos’ horns. As the Environmental Investigation Agency’s (EIA’s) Taylor Tench puts it, “we’ve never been all on the same page” when it comes to adopting measures to make the prohibition work.

Advocates for international trade in rhino horn — ostensibly from dehorned farmed individuals — rarely point this out when arguing that the ban hasn’t worked, as they have claimed following John Hume’s attempted auction of his giant rhino farm. But it is a critical point to understand in the debate over trade because it shows the ban has much room for improvement.

Global ban: reality check

Parties to the global wildlife trading body — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) — agreed to ban the international trade in rhinos’ horns in 1977.

The prohibition had limitations right from the start, according to Tench, a senior wildlife policy analyst based in EIA’s Washington, DC, office. He points out that some of the major players in the trade were not parties to Cites until long after 1977. Yemen, for example, which was a significant consumer country for many years, only became a party to Cites in 1997.

After the ban’s introduction, thriving domestic markets also continued. This was the case for other key consumer nations like China, which only shut down its domestic trade in 1993. It has more recently relaxed some restrictions.

South Africa, meanwhile, continued a domestic trade in rhinos’ horns until the government introduced a moratorium in 2009. This was lifted in 2017 because of legal action by Hume and another private rhino owner.

Elsewhere, it remains legal to trade pre-1947, worked rhino horn, such as antique items. Moreover, it’s still possible to move such antique products, along with hunting trophies, internationally, meaning the global ban does not wholly prohibit the trading of rhino horn overseas.

Exceptions create pathways for criminals to exploit

Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu has called for a full ban on the rhino horn trade, not least because legal trade provides cover for illicit activities. Indeed, the legal trade has frustrated efforts to tackle rhino horn trafficking, according to retired US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agent Tim Santel, who now works with the nonprofit organisation Focused Conservation.

Santel was the special agent in charge of the FWS Special Investigations Unit at the time of Operation Crash, a yearslong criminal investigation into the US’s role in the trade. He says that the antiques trade posed a particular challenge, with many auction houses selling rhino horn products at the time, the exact origin of which were almost impossible to tell upon sight.

“This is the question that nobody asks,” Santel says, in relation to the push to open international trade.

Although it may be possible to establish the legality of a horn in the earliest stages of a commercial supply chain, such as through DNA testing, microchipping and tagging, once it’s shipped off to be worked into a libation cup or carving at a factory, then sent to an auction house or online marketplace to be sold, how do you know it came from legal stock?

“How can you look at a cup and say that cup is legal, and that cup is not legal? You can’t do it,” Santel says.

The retired FWS agent also argues that exemptions to wildlife trade bans help offenders. Once you start making exceptions, you’re “creating these pathways for the criminals and the wildlife traffickers to exploit”, he says.

Cites was approached for comment but did not respond.

Stockpiles: a trafficker’s dream

Rhino horn stockpiles provide wildlife traffickers with a further pathway for exploitation. According to a 2022 Wildlife Justice Commission report, up to one-third of rhino horn seizures over the past decade may have originated from legal stockpiles. These horns came from the private sector, such as rhino farms, and government stocks, entering the illegal trade through “theft or illegal sale of horns”, the report said.

Before this, a 2012 report by Traffic highlighted that “serious discrepancies” emerged in records of the South African private sector’s stockpiles of rhino horn from 2009, with “unscrupulous” wildlife industry insiders believed to be selling them to criminal actors. This triggered the country’s moratorium on the domestic trade, it said.

Tench says the situation shows that “it’s impossible to control the entire supply of rhino horn”, casting doubt on any argument that if Cites lifted the global ban, the source and supply of horns could be strictly controlled.

To eliminate the risk that stockpiles pose, Kenya laid down a proposal at a Cites conference in 2022. The country called for talks on starting a conservation fund for elephant and rhino range states that they could access upon the non-commercial destruction of their elephant ivory and rhino horn stockpiles.

In its proposal, Kenya explained that stockpiles provide “poachers, traders, speculators, and consumers” with reason to think that trade “may be restored” and therefore “maintains or expands commercial demand”. However, in a further example of a lack of unified, concerted global action, Kenya’s proposal did not garner enough support to move forward.

Legalisation would make demand explode

Despite the trade ban’s limitations, there have been sustained periods of low rhino killing since its introduction. From the 1990s to the mid-2000s, for example, poaching numbers in South Africa specifically remained consistently low.

Tench says that the 1990s were “the closest the world got to true prohibition” of any legal trade, with China and Yemen cracking down domestically. He points to other progress in the years since, such as countries updating and implementing national laws to treat horn trafficking as a serious crime.

From around 2008, however, rhino killing spiralled. The poaching peaked in the mid-2010s but remains very high. Within this period, Vietnam has become a significant player in the trade.

Several factors appear to be involved in the enduring onslaught. These factors include that, for a time, Vietnamese criminals utilised the trade exemptions enjoyed by the trophy-hunting industry and participated in so-called pseudo-hunts to secure horn. The socioeconomic situations in source and destination countries also factor in, as do ever more extravagant rumours about the health benefits of consuming rhinos’ horns.

Wildlife Justice Commission investigations show that the major driver in terms of demand currently is for luxury and status goods, such as carvings. Studies suggest that these people will not be satiated by a legal supply of horn from farmed rhinos, as they covet products from wild animals.

Indeed, legalising international trade risks making it easier for criminals to launder horns from poached individuals and, as Kahumbu warned, could expose “wild rhinos to greater threats from poachers than ever before”.

The EMS Foundation’s Michele Pickover also cautions that a legal trade would expand demand.

“Once you start opening the trade in any animal, it then becomes sought after, and it just grows and grows,” she says.

Pickover adds that once stimulated, trying to contain demand would be near impossible.

Rhinos won’t win in legal trade

For Dung Nguyen of Education for Nature – Vietnam, “The killing of rhinos will only stop when the buying stops.”

Effective enforcement is particularly important to deter buying by those driving demand currently — wealthy, status-hungry consumers, according to Tench.

Enforcement at many levels appears to need improvement, including international institutions like Cites better holding countries to account for trafficking-related high-level corruption.

The initiation of consistent, multiple-country efforts to take down criminal groups is also critical because, as Dung has argued, “We need to be prosecuting the kingpins at the top of the criminal networks to finally shut them down for good.”

The international community needs to provide financial support to rhino range states for enforcement and conservation too, Tench says. Santel points out that funding and enforcement could intertwine, saying, “In a perfect world, we’d be working on this together and when we take down a transnational organisation that had millions of dollars in their coffers, we would take that money and put it into conservation projects.”

This happened during Operation Crash, with some of the funds it seized going towards conservation.

Above all else, Tench says there needs to be “a clear unified message from all relevant parties that rhinos’ horns are not a commodity”. Santel concludes that an international trade would mean that stockpile owners, including criminal groups, make millions, but “the rhinos aren’t going to win”.

To give rhinos the best chance of winning, many argue that the world must go all in on the ban. In other words, it needs to channel its inner rhino mom and charge. DM

This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Comment:

ian hurst
11 July 2023 at 08:57
Oh Dear! The author seems to think that it is possible for “the relative parties to put their whole, unwavering weight behind the prohibition (on rhino horn sales)”. I think that money, greed, and indifference to rhinos means this will never happen. Whatever the chances, it is too wobbly a proposition on which to base the future of rhinos.
“The killing of rhinos will only stop when the buying stops.” Perhaps, but if legal horn is supplied by farmers, poaching will be less attractive as a source of horn. However, the main point is that years of trying have totally failed to curb the demand, so how do we meet this unstoppable buying? The only answer is to legalise rhino horn trade.
“Legalisation would make demand explode” This is a totally unsupported statement, and is possibly untrue. If demand does “explode”, farmers would, in time, be able to meet this demand, but only if the trade is legalised.

[Richprins]

The point is that nothing else has worked so far. Legalisation has many benefits, as outlined in the previous articles, and at worst we will be were we are now anyway.

[Lisbeth]

Let's try and see what happens

[Lisbeth]

World’s largest private rhino herd auction ends in silence

by Jim Tan on 11 August 2023

A recent online auction to find a buyer for the world's largest private rhino herd fell flat. While seemingly straightforward, this event unravels complex conservation challenges, financial struggles and the ever-present shadow of poaching. On May 1, the auction for the contentious captive-breeding project that comes with one in eight of all southern white rhinos in the world ended with no bids, reports Mongabay contributor Jim Tan.



Longtime rhino breeder John Hume is attempting to offload his herd of 1,999 southern white rhinos, in part because of unsustainable daily running costs of $9,800. Despite the effectiveness of Hume's breeding methods, the primary challenge remains the lack of safe spaces for these rhinos, casting doubts over the project's future.

Historically, large protected areas were the cornerstones of rhino conservation. However, the impact of poaching and limited budgets has shifted the focus to smaller, more manageable areas. This shift is evident when considering South Africa's Kruger National Park has lost 75% of its southern white rhinos since 2011 — more than 8,000 individuals.

Hume's herd alone represents 13% of the subspecies. His financial model hinged on the potential legalization of the rhino horn trade, an issue deeply intertwined with the game-farming industry, which derives a significant portion of its income from trophy hunting.

"Because the price that people were willing to pay to hunt a rhino was really high, there was a lot of incentive for landowners to grow the population of rhinos," says Hayley Clements from Stellenbosch University.

However, Hume's approach remains financially unsustainable without a legal trade avenue. His high-tech security system, boasting advanced radar and thermal-imaging cameras, contributes heavily to the project's soaring costs.

While debates continue about the merits and pitfalls of intensive breeding for rhino conservation, one thing is clear: innovative solutions with solid funding are needed. "Ideally, everyone likes the idea of these really extensive systems where animals can be wild, but where are those systems, and who is paying for those systems?" Clements says.

To read the whole article, click on the title.

[Richprins]

Give trade a chance!

[Lisbeth]

Hume’s herd of 2,000 African rhinos get a last-minute ‘lifeline’ in major purchase and rewilding project


Several of the 2,000 white rhino that will be rewilded over the next 10 years. (Photo: Brent Stirton)

By Tony Carnie | 04 Sep 2023

When John Hume put his 2,000 rhino up for auction in April, he didn’t receive a single bid. On Monday night, the NGO African Parks announced it would purchase the world’s largest population of privately owned white rhinos, which will be ‘rewilded’ over 10 years.
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Africa’s beleaguered rhinos have been thrown a significant lifeline with the announcement that nearly 2,000 semi-wild rhinos owned by South African rhino breeder John Hume will be “rewilded” into reserves across South Africa and other parts of the continent over the next 10 years.

African Parks, a private Johannesburg-based conservation NGO that manages 22 protected areas in partnership with 12 governments across Africa, confirmed on Monday, 4 September that it had “stepped in as the new owner of the world’s largest private captive rhino breeding operation”, the Platinum Rhino project, a 7,800-hectare property in North West.


Southern white rhino calf. (Photo: Brent Stirton / African Parks)

The project was started by Hume, a wealthy property developer turned wildlife rancher who has earned both opprobrium and praise for his decades-old initiative to breed rhinos, harvest their horns without harming them physically and then sell the horns to buyers in the Far East.

However, with no indication that the majority of member states of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) are willing to overturn the 1974 international ban on the trade in rhino horns, Hume announced earlier this year that he had run out of funds to keep his project going and was offering them for sale via an online auction.

But by all accounts, very few bidders showed any interest, casting the future security and welfare of the about 2000 rhinos into jeopardy.

That changed on Monday, 4 August when African Parks CEO Peter Fearnhead confirmed in a statement that his organisation had agreed to purchase the Platinum Rhino farm and all its rhinos – with the endorsement of the South African Government and the African Rhino Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).


White Rhino at Akagera National Park in Rwanda. (Photo: Drew Bantlin)

Dr Mike Knight, chairman of the IUCN specialist group, told Daily Maverick on Monday he regarded African Parks as a credible and responsible conservation organisation and was optimistic that the animals could be successfully rewilded.

“The key thing will be finding conservation areas that are large enough and secure from poaching… The conservation sector is delighted that African Parks can provide a credible solution for this important population, and a significant lifeline for this Near Threatened species.”

African Parks – without disclosing any of the financial arrangements of the deal – said it had agreed to purchase the farm and all 2,000 southern white rhino with one clear objective: “To rewild these rhino over the next 10 years to well-managed and secure areas, establishing or supplementing strategic populations, thereby de-risking the future of the species”.

The opening bid for the rhinos at auction was set at $10-million (R182-million) though Hume was reportedly claimed to have spent $150-million on rhino breeding over the past 30 years.

Following the deal with African Parks, Hume’s breeding programme, based in North West, will be phased out and the project will end once all the rhinos are released into the wild.

“This is one of the largest continent-wide rewilding endeavours to occur for any species,” the NGO said, noting that Hume’s captive-bred rhinos represented nearly 15% of the world’s remaining wild rhino population.

“As a result of financial stress, Platinum Rhino was put up for auction on the 26th of April 2023, but did not receive any bids, putting these rhinos at serious risk of poaching and fragmentation.


White rhino cow and calf. (Photo: Brent Stirton / African Parks)

“Given African Parks’ experience in effectively managing protected areas and carrying out wildlife translocations at scale, including bringing rhino back to Rwanda, Malawi and Democratic Republic of the Congo, African Parks was approached by numerous concerned individuals from the conservation sector to provide a solution to prevent a potential conservation crisis, and to help secure the future for a species in decline.

“After conducting a thorough due diligence and with the support of the South African government, as well as having secured emergency funding to make the transaction possible, African Parks agreed to purchase the farm and all 2,000 rhinos.

“African Parks had no intention of being the owner of a captive rhino breeding operation with 2,000 rhinos. However, we fully recognise the moral imperative of finding a solution for these animals, so that they can once again play their integral role in fully functioning ecosystems,” said Fearnhead.

“The scale of this undertaking is simply enormous, and therefore daunting. However, it is equally one of the most exciting and globally strategic conservation opportunities. We will be working with multiple governments, funding partners and conservation organisations, who are committed to making this rewilding vision a reality.”

‘Easy’ rewilding

Dr Richard Emslie, a Pietermaritzburg-based rhino conservation expert, told Daily Maverick he was confident that the mostly captive-bred rhinos could be “rewilded very easily”.

“I would call them ‘semi-wild’ rather than ‘semi-captive’. It’s interesting that some of John Hume’s black rhinos were sent to a property in Eswatini a few years ago – and within just a few months of their arrival one of the females had been mated by a wild rhino. So I strongly suspect his white rhinos will also do fine. Obviously, this will depend on where they are going.”

Emslie said he also believed that Hume deserved credit for building up such a large population and protecting them at his own expense at a time when other state-managed rhino populations had been decimated.

Barbara Creecy, the national Minister of Environmental Affairs is currently in Kenya for a climate change meeting and could not be reached for comment on Monday night.

However, African Parks quoted her in a media statement as congratulating both John Hume and African Parks for “reaching this important agreement which facilitates a conservation solution for the rhino currently in a captive facility”.

“Our Government is guided in our approach to conservation by the UN Convention on Biodiversity and our own white paper. In this regard we are ready to support African Parks and other partners with technical and scientific advice in developing a conservation solution that includes translocating the animals over a period of time to suitable parks and community conservancies in South Africa and on the African continent,” the statement said.

The white rhino as a species is under extreme pressure, especially in South Africa, because of poaching. White rhinos historically consisted of two subspecies: the southern white and the northern white. The northern white rhino is functionally extinct, with just two non-breeding females in captivity in Kenya.

Southern white rhino reached an all-time low of 30 to 40 animals in the 1930s, but through effective conservation measures, increased to about 20,000 individuals by 2012. However, with the dramatic rise in poaching for their horns for the illegal wildlife trade, their numbers have fallen to below 13,000 today. DM

[Lisbeth]

Viva "African Parks"!