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

[Lisbeth]

Opinionista • Dave Balfour and Luthando Dziba • 5 August 2021
(Dr Dave Balfour consults widely in Africa on conservation management, planning and strategy, following 20 years in formal conservation. He is a member of the IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group and chairs the SADC Rhino Management Group. Dr Luthando Dziba is Acting CEO of SANParks. Both authors write in their personal capacities.)

We should be looking far more actively at a range of options for conserving rhino. These include philanthropy, public-private-community partnerships, social impact bonds for communities adjacent to national parks, tax incentives and other innovative approaches to securing a national herd of each subspecies of rhino.

Earlier this year, a panel appointed by Minister of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment Barbara Creecy released a comprehensive report reviewing policies, legislation and practices relating to the management and trade of lion, elephant, leopard and black and white rhino. The department subsequently developed and gazetted a draft policy position on the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of the same five species.

The draft policy has intensified an ongoing discourse with extremely polarised positions characterised by those who advocate trade in rhino horn and those who oppose it. We take this opportunity to frame a new discourse on the future of rhino conservation in South Africa.

First, some background

South Africa is widely acknowledged as having saved the southern white rhino from extinction in the early part of the 20th century. This was done by securing the remaining rhino clustered around the confluence of the black and white iMfolozi Rivers (commonly cited to be fewer than 100 rhinos) from ongoing and indiscriminate hunting. Continental numbers of the subspecies subsequently grew to more than 21,000 in 2012.

There are parallels with the two subspecies of black rhino. During the second half of the 20th century, under sustained levels of indiscriminate hunting of rhino for their horn, which took place in all range states, continental numbers crashed from an estimated 65,000 to 2,500 in 1992. Their numbers have since recovered to 5,500 black rhino in Africa, of which about 35% to 40% are in South Africa.

Following a two-decade hiatus in poaching which ended in 2008, the past 13 years has been a period in which rhino have again experienced significant poaching pressure. More than 8,000 rhino, the bulk of which were white rhino, were killed in South Africa alone. The situation is very serious, and whether we like it or not, the fate of Africa’s rhino will depend to a significant extent on decisions and actions that we take as a country – the next five to 10 years is going to be a critical period.

Once the number of white rhino had recovered to around 650 individuals in the 1970s, measures were taken to expand their range out of iMfolozi Game Reserve. Founder populations were placed in other state-protected areas, including Kruger National Park (KNP), and subsequently on to private properties. Promulgation of the Game Theft Act in 1991 made provision for private ownership of rhinos. This meant that rhinos could be legally traded and, along with other wildlife, a rhino economy was established as individual rhinos acquired financial value. During the hiatus in poaching, many property owners, estimated to be over 300 at the peak, saw opportunities to buy and maintain small populations of rhino.

Since the resurgence in poaching, rhino losses have not been evenly spread. State-run protected areas, notably KNP and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, have experienced the bulk of the poaching and the number of white rhinos has declined alarmingly. We estimate that more than 50% of white rhino are currently privately owned.

The fivefold increase in security costs over the past decade has resulted in many private owners divesting in rhinos and a concomitant 75% decline in the auction price for a rhino. Others have used this opportunity to buy rhinos, leading to consolidation of private rhino ownership. These “rhino investors” now own an estimated 45% or more of all privately owned white rhino in South Africa.

Security remains a significant challenge for these properties and there is an associated tendency towards higher densities of rhino being kept on many of the properties. Under these conditions, there is commonly not sufficient natural grazing and rhinos are provided supplementary feed as well as additional veterinary care. In the absence of a meaningful market for rhinos, many private owners have for a long time been advocating for the opening of formal channels to trade legally in rhino horn in order to cover their costs.

This brings us back to the draft policy position that we opened with. With respect to rhino management, the draft policy proposes, among others, reversal of the domestication and intensification of management of rhino. In relation to trade-related issues, it proposes, among others, that South Africa implement the recommendations of a 2014 Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on rhino horn trade. The recommendations relate to security, community empowerment, biological management, responsive legislative provisions and demand management, and to finding a mechanism to sustainably fund the future of rhino conservation.

Reimagining rhino conservation in South Africa

In this context, instead of asking how we can fund current rhino conservation efforts, we propose that we should be using the crisis to step back and ask how we can conserve rhino in a manner that best advances current and anticipated future national environmental, social and political landscapes. This requires that we set out a bold vision for rhino conservation, for which we then set about identifying appropriate interventions and figuring out how to fund them.

As a contribution to taking this debate forward, we propose South Africa should re-envision itself as home to thriving populations of both species of rhino, with ownership shared between state, private and community actors, and which contribute to our cultural and natural heritages and to the economic wellbeing of their custodians and the country. In our efforts, we should seek to work with other range states.

Three important challenges to overcome in achieving this vision in the short to medium terms are, first, to agree on and implement models for the more equitable sharing of ownership and management of rhino. Second, we need to secure sufficient expansive parcels of land for each subspecies, populated with large enough populations of each subspecies of rhino to satisfy their demographic, ecological, behavioural and population genetic requirements. Third, we need to sustainably finance the capital and operational costs of the new sites.

We believe these game-changing interventions will put South Africa firmly in the driving seat of reviving thriving wild rhino populations with inclusive ownership across the country.

Conservation in general, and rhino conservation in particular, continues to be seen as untransformed and the preserve of the few in South Africa. Currently, fewer than 10 properties have rhino in which community members have full or partial ownership. Considering the national imperative to transform participation and ownership patterns, clear and material steps need to be taken to increase access to wildlife ownership and participation in conservation by those previously disenfranchised, particularly rural communities.

As highlighted in the CoI recommendations, community empowerment is an important consideration for any future conservation initiative. It is also important to define models for community ownership that do not set the recipients up to fail by supplying rhinos without the necessary infrastructure, expertise, security and financial resources to manage them. At the same time, we need to seek ways to minimise the pitfalls of elite capture by new players.

We need to build on our strengths and minimise our weaknesses. There is little doubt that private rhino owners have contributed significantly to increasing the numbers of rhino in South Africa and should be encouraged to continue playing a role in the conservation of these animals in future. The question is, how? Rhino need large land parcels in which they are able to graze naturally in the veld and select their own mates. They must be able to do what rhino do naturally, without being killed unnecessarily.

Knowing this, and recognising the high degree of compartmentalisation, unnatural densities and commonly skewed sex ratios with limited mate choice that exist, it is clear that there is currently a degree of suboptimal conservation management taking place in the sphere of private rhino ownership. In other words, conservation is more than simply a numbers game and this needs to be addressed.

It is also important to bear in mind that, contrary to popular opinion, owning rhino is not necessarily lucrative any more. There was a two-decade “bubble” in which poaching levels were low and space to expand rhino numbers was plenty, and some made money. These conditions no longer exist, and we should not rely on such conditions prevailing again in future.

The National Protected Area Expansion Strategy (Npaes) provides a possible mechanism for identifying and securing land that meets the need for protecting priority areas, while at the same time promoting partnerships between the state and private or communal landowners. The Npaes encourages the use of the Biodiversity Stewardship Programme (BSP) for this purpose. The BSP is structured to enable private or community landowners to partner with the state by declaring their land as contractual national parks or nature reserves.

We should be using these established tools and seeking opportunities to meet both protected area expansion priorities and rhino conservation needs, while at the same time contributing to a national transformation imperative by increasing access to wildlife ownership and participation in conservation.

It is likely that not all suitable land for protected area expansion and rhino conservation will coincide with community land, or that communities will elect not to declare a portion of their land. In these instances, where community land is not contributed to as part of a partnership, it will still be important to consider issues of participation and ownership in wildlife conservation, and contractual arrangements, which distinguish between land ownership and wildlife ownership, can be explored. If carefully thought through, and honestly brokered, this may enable community ownership in wildlife and rhino conservation, even where they do not have land equity in a protected area.

Importantly, it will contribute to increasing access to the wildlife economy in a manner that embraces and strengthens sound conservation biology, and this will bode well for the future. The experiences of innovation in this regard in Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya, as well as other countries, can provide lessons to guide our decision-making.

While we do not have easy solutions to the financing problem, we propose that we should be looking far more actively at a range of options. These include philanthropy, public-private-community partnerships, social impact bonds for communities adjacent to national parks, tax incentives and other innovative approaches to securing a national herd of each subspecies of rhino.

Although the future of ecotourism is uncertain in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is little doubt that it can play a role in future revenue streams. Influential global sentiment is increasingly unsupportive of hunting and trade in rhino horn, and will likely influence our decisions.

Once the management of populations of all three subspecies of rhino has been stabilised, and we as a nation can reliably account for them, there may be opportunities for revenue to be generated by legally trading in the horn that is collected from natural rhino mortalities and from ecologically appropriate and well-managed hunting operations – but we should not rely on this being an option.

To conclude

There are many details to be thought through and many hurdles to navigate, but we are arguing that we should not allow the current crisis to leave us locked into a narrow set of options at this time.

By using conservation biology, leveraging partnerships between the state, the private sector, communities and NGOs, and attending to national imperatives for transformation and protected area expansion, we can be bold in our vision that most South Africans recognise value and feel a sense of ownership over what is uniquely ours: our landscapes, cultural heritage and our biodiversity, including its wildlife.

As we enter into a world that is increasingly stressed from the climate crisis, habitat loss and biodiversity loss, and as we increasingly rapidly learn that our ecosystems are not external to our economy but are integral to our wellbeing, we need to increase the value that every citizen places on our biodiversity and natural heritage, including rhino – this can only happen if ownership and access are more equitably shared. DM

[Klipspringer]

Hear, hear

Make it happen and find the money

[Lisbeth]

Nice to hear a concrete proposal for once

[Richprins]

There is interesting background here, but no real new proposals? Private ownership comes with great responsibility and financial work, which is anathema to communities in most areas. Otherwise it is just the status quo.

[Lisbeth]

Is trouble ahead for South Africa’s private rhino breeders?


A freshly dehorned white rhino bull emerges from the grog of a tranquiliser at John Hume’s ranch in South Africa on 5 August 2021. (Photo: Ed Stoddard for Undark)

By Ed Stoddard | 13 Dec 2021

Most of South Africa’s white rhinos live on private ranches. But not everyone thinks that’s a good idea.
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Three hours outside Johannesburg, the gravel road to John Hume’s home slices through grasslands tinged a parched amber hue as the winter dry season fades. The former hotel mogul owns the world’s largest privately held rhino population: 2,000 southern white rhinoceroses, roaming 21,000 acres of former crop and cattle lands. A 60-mile long electrified fence rings the property. Its two-fold role is to keep the pachyderms in and poachers out.

Hume has not lost a rhino to poachers in almost five years, thanks to formidable security. Over the past decade though, state-run parks have been overwhelmed by poachers, who can sell a single rhino horn for six-figure sums. As those wild populations decline, research suggests nearly half of South Africa’s estimated 12,300 white rhinos are now in private hands. With the trend of private breeding growing rapidly, some experts say this number may even have already surpassed 50 percent.

But the fate of Hume’s rhinos — and South Africa’s unusual game privatisation experiment — hang in the balance. In December 2020, a government panel recommended phasing out intensive and captive rhino breeding in the country, as part of a broader set of policies for wildlife conservation. According to the panel and a subsequent government policy paper, captive breeding operations like the one owned by Hume are potentially harming the species’ future.

In an email, the panel’s chair, Pamela Yako, expressed two concerns about intensive breeding and management: “that this, firstly, compromises the genetics of the population and secondly compromises their ability to independently survive in the wild.”

While Yako and her colleagues acknowledge the role of private reserves in helping to build up rhino populations, they conclude it’s time to move the more intensively managed private populations back into wilder habitats.

The panel’s report has been accepted by the South African Cabinet, signalling top-level political support. After a public comment period, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment will refine the policy, then draft a white paper to send to Parliament.

But the prospect of losing their herds has alarmed many private rhino owners and conservationists, who say the policy will make southern white rhinos more vulnerable to poaching. “We have rhino in well-protected zones,” said Pelham Jones, chairman of the Private Rhino Owners’ Association, or Proa. Now, he added, “the government is recommending that these captive breeding operations, which have proven to be highly, highly successful, and are achieving the best breeding outcome one could hope for, are to be shut down.” The group is considering all options, including a legal challenge that would potentially ensnare the process in years of legal wrangling.

At stake here are questions about how best to preserve a threatened species. The politics are fraught as well, and charged by South Africa’s racial tensions: Proponents of the new policy point out that the country’s black majority has often been excluded from the benefits of rebounding game populations. By Proa’s own estimates, there are between 150 and 180 private rhino owners in South Africa; nearly all of them are white.


John Hume, owner of the largest rhino herd in South Africa, which may account for up to 13% of the global population of white rhinos. (Photo: Jürgen Bätz / Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

None of them has an operation as large as Hume’s, whose herd may account for up to 13 percent of the global population of white rhinos. His ranch also appears to be a prime target of the new legislation. In her email, Yako expressed concerns about “a single operation that has a large number of rhino under intensive management and breeding” — seemingly a reference to Hume, although Eleanor Momberg, a spokesperson for the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, wrote in an email to Undark that Yako and other panelists were no longer available for further comment because their contracts had expired.

The new policy could eventually undermine the legal basis for Hume’s breeding project, leaving the herd in limbo. It’s unclear who would take over Hume’s herd — and how a South African state balancing intense fiscal pressures with massive social needs would pay for a mass rhino relocation.

Sitting in his modest home office, which is adorned with rhino pictures and carvings, Hume maintained he is adding to an endangered species’ numbers. “Surely that’s what we all want,” he told Undark. “Show me the good grazing, and assure me that you can keep the bullets away, and I will show you my rhinos thriving.”

Africa is home to two of the five surviving rhinoceros species: the larger white rhino, a grass grazer, and the smaller black rhino, which browses on trees and bushes. In the late 19th century, European settlers killed thousands of the animals. Every southern white rhino today is descended from a single population in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. In the 1890s, the animals reached their low point, numbering just a few dozen.

From this bastion — now called the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park — the population rebounded. By the 1960s, flush with rhinos, a government organisation called the Natal Parks Board began selling and donating animals to other African reserves, and to zoos around the world. In 1986, Natal Parks Board started selling to private operations, too. Five years later, the South African government passed the Game Theft Act, which allows people to own rhinos and other game on their property, provided it has been enclosed with fencing.

The law has critics. In a 2015 dissertation, scholar Dhoya Snijders described the act as “one of the largest and most unnoticed transfers of common goods to private landowners in the country’s history.”

“This, firstly, compromises the genetics of the population and secondly compromises their ability to independently survive in the wild,” wrote Yako.

Thanks to the new legislation, game ranchers began to rapidly accumulate rhinos to breed and trade for profit, to draw ecotourists, and to stage expensive hunts. Nowadays, most owners also slice off the animals’ horns and store them, in the event that a now 44-year-old global moratorium on the rhino horn trade is lifted. These owners argue that trading rhino horn may help regulate its illicit traffic and would provide substantial revenue to cover the large costs associated with managing and conservation of the species, said Jones. Comprised of keratin — the substance in human fingernails — rhino horn can grow back after it is trimmed, an operation that entails tranquilising the animal. De-horning is also aimed at thwarting poachers by removing their ultimate target.

By 2010, there were 18,800 white rhinos in South Africa, according to estimates from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, of which at least 5,500 were privately owned.

But as demand for rhino horn grew in newly affluent Asian economies such as Vietnam — where consumers prize its alleged medicinal properties — poaching surged. A record 1,215 rhinos were poached in South Africa in 2014.

Although numbers have dropped since then, poachers still take hundreds of animals per year. The activity has centred on Kruger National Park, South Africa’s flagship wildlife reserve. The park is vast — roughly the size of New Jersey — making it difficult for the cash-strapped government to police. And entrenched poverty in neighbouring communities has pushed some people towards poaching.



Today, as state losses mount, poachers are increasingly targeting private reserves. Government data shows 15 percent of rhinos poached in 2019 were on private land. In the first six months of 2021, that spiked to 30 percent. Owners who can afford it invest heavily in security. Meanwhile, many small-scale rhino ranchers have sold out because of costs.

At least so far, the scale of Hume’s operation — and his deep pockets — have fended off poachers. At Hume’s “Ops Center”, 10 TV screens line one wall. Radars and thermal cameras monitor the property, covering the rhinos’ range and the public roads that cut past the ranch. The flat, grassy terrain is ideal for the motion-detecting radars, which cannot penetrate solid objects such trees or buildings. If an intruder gets over the electrified fence, concealed speakers blare warnings while a team rushes to intercept.

“We are always ready, and we can fly a chopper to the scene quickly if we need to,” said Brandon Jones, a helicopter pilot and Hume’s head of security, with a handgun holstered to his hip. The team’s arsenal includes assault rifles; the poachers are also heavily armed. Hume, who refers to the team as his “private army”, said security costs him $2 million per year.

The investment seems to be working. While poachers killed 32 of Hume’s rhinos between 2007 and 2017, he says he has not lost an animal since. More of his rhinos have been killed by lighting strikes.

According to Hume, the operation has accumulated nearly 9 tons of rhino horn, worth a nine-figure sum on the black market. But, he said, his passion for rhinos was driven by the species’ plight in the cross-hairs of poachers, not potential profits. “I always liked breeding,” he said. “I became aware in the early ‘90s of the slaughter of rhino elsewhere in Africa. They were being slaughtered to extinction.” Around that time, he purchased his first 10 animals.

Today, driving around the property, it’s possible to see clumps of rhinos amid the windswept landscape of long wild grass, punctuated by the occasional tree. Other times, there are no signs of the big critters at all, beyond their telltale scat in the soil.

Inside this gated fortress, the number of rhinos on Hume’s ranch has swelled: Between 2008, when he started breeding at his current ranch, and September 2021, Hume’s rhinos had given birth to some 1,690 calves. But whether that growth is an unmitigated good for rhino conservation, or a liability for the future of the species, remains contested.

Yako and other critics of captive breeding have raised concerns that the closely managed life on the ranch could give rise to domestication, a fate that historically has not occurred in any large African mammal, or render the rhino unsuitable for rewilding.

Hume’s rhinos are divided into breeding areas surrounded by electric fencing averaging 1,200 acres. The animals roam, graze, and mate freely in their allotted spaces. But they are intensely monitored, and each enclosure or camp has a ranger who does a daily headcount, often on horseback. Still, Michelle Otto, Hume’s resident and full-time veterinarian, said the animals are far from domesticated. “We are only on our second generation now,” she said, as she prepared medicine for an old cow rhino with hip problems. “I’ve been chased into a tree by a white rhino here because I went in on foot, and one didn’t take a liking to me, and she stormed me.”

Otto said the animals can be habituated to certain vehicles — but, she noted, even wild Kruger rhinos are now accustomed to cars. The ranch does supplemental feeding, mostly in the dry winter months, which Otto said was at most 40 percent of the rhinos’ daily intake. “The rest they take off the veld,” she said.


A tranquilised bull rhino gets a trimming at John Hume’s ranch in South Africa on 5 August 2021. Most owners slice off the animals’ horns, which will regrow, and store them in case the moratorium on the rhino horn trade is lifted. De-horning also thwarts poachers by removing their ultimate target. (Photo: Ed Stoddard for Undark)

If an intruder gets over the electrified fence, concealed speakers blare warnings while a team rushes to intercept.

Some of Hume’s rhinos have already been successfully reintroduced into the wild. Hume sold his last 16 black rhinos — famed for their ornery temperament — to the small kingdom of Eswatini, which borders South Africa. “This group of rhinos has been suitable for introduction, save for one young male which was hand-raised,” wrote Mick Reilly, conservation and security executive with Eswatini’s parks, in an email.

“Hume’s white rhinos as a whole would be suitable for re-introduction into the wild,” added Reilly, who has visited the ranch.

Yako and others have also expressed concerns about the genetic diversity of rhinos in captive breeding populations. Even in the wild, rhino genetics pose serious issues: A century ago, when population numbers were so low, the bottleneck reduced the genetic variability of the species. According to Petra Kretzschmar, a biologist and rhino expert at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, this state of affairs made the species vulnerable to disease and fertility problems.

Compounding the issue, rhinos tend to mate with their relatives. “Inbreeding is unfortunately a big threat to the white rhino population,” Kretzschmar wrote in an email. “It is therefore very important to prevent rhinos from inbreeding.”

In a 2020 study of rhino breeding patterns on a large private ranch in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province, Kretzschmar and several colleagues found that white rhinos are not choosy about mating with kin. The study, published in the journal Evolutionary Applications, found “no sign of inbreeding avoidance: Females tended to mate more frequently with closely related males”.

The researchers recommended rotating breeding bulls every six years — the time it takes a female to reach sexual maturity — between reserves.


Brandon Jones, head of security at John Hume’s rhino fortress. Thanks to formidable security that costs about $2 million annually, Hume has not lost a rhino to poachers in almost five years. (Photo: Ed Stoddard for Undark)

Kretzschmar, who has visited Hume’s ranch, said policies there do effectively address the issue. Otto keeps detailed records in a stud book to prevent inbreeding. Compared to the private reserve where her study was conducted, Kretzschmar said in a phone interview, Otto “has the benefit that the rhinos can be monitored much better”, as they are put into a smaller spaces that can be more readily observed.

“So her records are much more accurate, which results in the fact that she knows exactly who has fathered whom and can immediately move an animal to a different camp to prevent inbreeding,” said Kretzschmar.

In the paper, Kretzschmar — who also does paid consulting for a private game ranch — and her co-authors said South Africa’s private reserves may be the last refuge for the species.

Still, Hume’s approach has critics.

“In John Hume’s case, there is control over the breeding,” said Dave Balfour, an ecologist and member of the IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group who contributed to the government report arguing for reimagining rhino conservation in the region. He says these breeding strategies “are not anywhere near the gold standard”.

“A natural rhino population has 50/50 male/female,” Balfour said, adding that Hume’s project had somewhere between 50 cows to three or four bulls. “That is not a natural mating selection system.” (In a WhatsApp message, Otto defended the ranch’s arrangement. “We are a breeding operation, therefore we are skewed towards having higher female densities in a set location than in the wild,” she wrote, adding that females are permitted to choose among two or three bulls.)

Other critics have concerns about the stockpiling of rhino horn, detecting a profit motive beneath a facade of conservation. “Are you trying to mask an economic incentive behind a conservation philosophy?” asked Neil Greenwood, the Southern African director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an NGO. “I don’t think that the captive breeding is necessarily the most effective way to protect those animals.”

At issue are larger questions about the future of wildlife in South Africa, where populations of large, charismatic animals have rebounded. Many are in private hands: Today, according to the government report, there are 9,000 private game ranches in South Africa, comprising around 50 million acres.

The growth of private game reserves has raised some concerns about equity. South Africa is the most unequal society in the world, according to the World Bank, and land ownership patterns remain skewed in favor of the White minority.

According to the government policy paper, many communities with historical ties to wildlife lands have been walled out of the present conservation arrangement. “The forceful removal of people from the land led to the current South African ‘Wildlife Model,’ the report says, “where the largest percentage of wildlife land is owned by the White minority and by the state, with few wildlife resources on community lands.”

Critics note that these conservation disputes are unfolding amid persistent government failures to enact land reforms. “The disparities in ownership in the wildlife industry somewhat reflects what we see in other sub-sectors of agriculture, where participation of Black farmers remains marginal,” said Wandile Sihlobo, the chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and author of a recent book on land reform in the country.

“Are you trying to mask an economic incentive behind a conservation philosophy?” asked Greenwood.

As part of its vision, the government panel calls for the removal of fences separating many conservation areas. The report envisions “an authentic wild sense of place” with “larger contiguous areas containing vibrant self-sustaining populations” of elephants, buffalos, lions, leopards, rhinos and other species.

That’s far from the present reality: In South Africa all megafauna except leopards are contained in fenced areas of some kind. And the government panel’s broader vision of wildness has elicited some skepticism from conservationists — and private rhino owners. In a written submission raising objections to the new policy, Proa argues that “human beings in South Africa and across the world simply do not have the luxury of a utopian concept of wild animals roaming across millions of hectares of unfenced, uninhabited and human-free plains”.

In an email, Momberg wrote that Barbara Creecy, Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, preferred not to comment, explaining that officials are still reviewing public responses to the proposal.

For now, Hume’s rhino breeding operation is continuing to grow. On a recent morning, Otto and other Hume employees prepared to dehorn 19 bulls — a brisk, clinical undertaking.

While the rhinos may live carefully managed lives on a ranch, they remain dangerous. Aiming a rifle-like tranquiliser gun out the window of her Toyota Landcruiser, Otto shot a dart into each rhino, generally from around 50 yards. As the rhino wobbled, a member of the up to 15-person crew pulled a blindfold over its eyes, while several men ran in to keep the animal upright. Once the rhino was lying on its chest, one of the ranch’s managers used a hand-held electric saw to do the trimming.

“We are cutting above the growth plate,” Otto said as the saw sliced through the horn of a 2-ton bull. “The section they are trimming is excess horn that contains no blood vessels or nerves.”

When the trimming was complete, Otto injected the rhino with an antidote to the tranquiliser.

“You don’t want to be next to him when he wakes up,” she cautioned. The situation was unnatural, but a rhino is a rhino.

This article first appeared in Undark Magazine

[Lisbeth]

Wasn't Hume close to going bankrupt a short while ago? I wonder what has happened to keep him going

[Richprins]

07 Jun

SA breeder to release 100 rhinos back into the wild every year


A private rhino farmer in the North West will release 100 farm-bred rhinos into the wild.
This will be done to restock the rhino population, which has been decimated by poaching.
A total of 451 rhinos were killed in 2021.

A leading South African private rhino breeder has announced plans to annually release 100 farm-bred rhinos into the wild to help restock a population decimated by poaching.

The animals will come from a 2004-strong herd, bred by private rhino farmer John Hume, who runs the world's biggest rhino farm on an 8 400-hectare piece of land in South Africa's North West province.

The deal to "annually re-wild approximately 100 southern white rhinoceros to their natural habitat in southern Africa is ready for implementation", a spokesperson for Hume's company, Platinum Rhino captive breeding operation, said on Tuesday.

The company did not state when the project would be rolled out.

South Africa is home to about 80 percent of the world's rhino population, but in recent years has suffered record slaughter by poachers.



Rhinos are being slaughtered in record numbers to meet the insatiable demand for their horns in countries such as China and Vietnam, often for use in traditional medicines.

The horn is mainly hard keratin, the same substance found in human nails, but on the black market, where it is sold in powdered form, it is believed to cure cancer and other diseases.

The southern white rhino, one of two subspecies of white rhino, is now considered endangered, with about 20 000 individuals remaining, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

It is classified as near-threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

https://www.news24.com/news24/southafri ... r-20220607

[Lisbeth]

I wonder if he has come to an agreement with the state or private reserves

Anyway, it's an excellent initiative.....if it works. I don't see why it should not

[graham]

I fear that in many cases this could turn out to be restocking for poachers. The latest pictures of rhino horn found at OR Tambo illustrate how rhino are being killed for tiny stubs after being dehorned.

First the demand for horn needs to be reduced but this is not in the interests of rhino farmers.

[Lisbeth]

The fight against poachers seems to have been intensified, even if mostly they get caught when it is too late to save the rhinos.