http://www.saflyermag.comban on the most valuable natural resource
currently available. We cannot use it legally
and the communities next door cannot use
it legally as a trade commodity. Therefore
we leave open the window of opportunity
that only organised crime can access.”
We have no choice but to defend our
rhino vigorously against the onslaught of
organised crime. The very substantial and
growing effort now in place to protect rhino
in South Africa bears testament to the
willingness of South Africans and people
abroad to try and rescue white and black
rhino from extirpation. However, since the
cost is now counted in human lives and
billions of Rands, it becomes evident that
it would be difficult to sustain the rescue
efforts in the long run.
Both the International Trade Ban and
the National Moratorium on trade in rhino
horn were instituted with the purest of
intentions: to curtail rhino poaching. Since
then, however, we have seen a terrible
escalation in poaching incidents in spite of
a massive increase in security measures.
One is therefore tempted to argue that
the trade bans are the cause of our woes.
But remember that as live rhino became
depleted in Africa and that as Asian
economies grew, demand for horn grew.
Perhaps, then, the poaching crisis would
have happened even in the absence of
trade bans. We can’t know, but many think
that the trade bans are at least a strong
driving force, incentivising crime networks
to do what they do best: exploit illegal
means of supplying a regulated commodity
to high paying customers.
Due to a unique set of features, rhino
horn cannot be compared sensibly with
other illegal commodities such as ivory,
tiger bones, gems and drugs. Unlike
drugs, rhino horn does not have any direct
detrimental effect on users. Regulation
should be driven by the need to protect the
producer (rhino) rather than the consumer.
Ivory and tiger bones only become
available after the animals are dead,
through natural or unnatural causes, but
horn can be harvested from wild rhino with
little harm (except, perhaps, to the rhino’s
ego). Rhino have a higher reproductive rate
than elephant and their horn production
rate is higher than that of ivory. An elephant
produces one set of tusks, whereas a rhino,
if kept alive, can regrow horn at quite a brisk
rate.
Diamonds are mainly regulated to
protect the markets for the legal producers
and, yes, the resulting buoyant prices
encourage diamond crime, but diamonds
are neither regulated to protect consumers
nor to protect a species. Consider that
rhino are mostly killed to supply illegal horn
(some illegal horn may come from natural
deaths and theft from legal producers),
whereas rhino owners who wish to trade in
horn mostly want to keep their rhino alive so
they can keep producing horn. Of course, a
legal trophy hunt also results in the death ofthe rhino, but in the final analysis the illegal
horn trade sector leads to unsustainable
butchering of rhino and the proposed legal
trade sector will be more humane and
certainly sustainable.
Whatever motivates the private sector
to protect rhino, be it to offer the full ‘big 5’
for ecotourism and having a part in saving
the species, or be it in the hope that one
day their investment can be recuperated
through sales, the stockpiles do keep
growing! Whole horns or shards of horn
are sometimes accidentally broken off in
fights, during captivity in bomas or during
transport. Eventually a rhino dies and there,
whether you want it or not, is a set of horns.
Many horns are also recovered after failed
poaching incidents and there are dehorning
programmes to make the animal less
attractive to poachers.
The security risk of these wanted or
unwanted stocks to private, provincial and
national reserves is huge. Horns are hot
potatoes and are now moved to secure
vaults with assistance from the state. I don’t
have the security clearance to know where
they are moved to, but I’m guessing some
facility of the Reserve Bank or similar. This
is not a bad thing, because legal producers
of rhino horn are thus forced to declare
and register their stocks, bringing us a
step closer to the kind of control that would
convince the world that we are capable
of managing an orderly, accountable and
sustainable horn industry that will benefit
conservation.
Most proponents of lifting the
international trade ban are in favour of
getting our house in order before we lift the
national moratorium on rhino horn trade.
The leakage of legal horn into the blackmarket must stop and trophy hunting must
be cleaned up so that it is not used as a
conduit of horn to the black market. All
horns must be registered and DNA coded
for control purposes.
From a Department of Environmental
Affairs (DEA) report published in 2014 it
appears that the national horn stockpile
(private, provincial and state) is presentlyabout 20,000 kg, growing annually by about
3,500 kg. If the trade bans were to be lifted,
the DEA report estimates that as much as
5,000 kg could be produced annually by
2020.
When rhino horn was last traded
legally, the price to the supplier was around
R35,000 per kg. The current black market
price is said to be R660,000 per kg. If legal
trade were to resume at a producer price
of one tenth of the black market prices,
the custodians of rhino stand to benefit by
about R360 million per year, sustainably.
This is based on the assumptions that some
private rhino owners will harvest horn,
some will continue dehorning primarily to
deter poaching, some provincial reserves
will dehorn, the national reserves will not
dehorn, and that all rhino keepers will
collect and register horns from breakage,
natural mortality and seizures after
poaching incidents.
The anti-trade lobbyists do articulate
some worrisome concerns:- The lifting of trade bans may
lead to laundering of illegal rhino
horn into legal trade, and leakage
of rhino horn into the illegal
international market. - Lifting of the national moratorium
may tarnish South Africa’s
international conservation
reputation. - There may be compliance and
enforcement challenges. - Lifting the bans might do little
to reduce poaching. Some
economists say it might even lead
to an increase in poaching. By
removing the stigma associated
with purchasing illegal horn,
We have seen a terrible
escalation in poaching incidents
in spite of a massive increase in
security measures.