The rhino is certainly one of the most endangered large mammals in Southern Africa and it is definitely threatened with extinction and yet the very people who should be saving it i.e. CITES and our nature conservation authorities are helping instead to push it to extinction.

The Rhino (uniquely amongst our large animals) grows its horn again if it is cut off, in other words you can cut it off with no ill effects to the Rhino and in two or three years time you can cut it off again. The Rhino lives for up to 40 years so why would you want to kill it at any stage during that 40 years but most Rhino in this country are killed long before they even reach the half way mark.

It is a fact that anyone who wants a permit to take a Rhino horn out of this country must kill the Rhino first. The only exception is if you export the live rhino with its horn intact. Either way this country loses a rhino which we can simply not afford as it is one of our most valuable natural resources. It has now been proven that when nature conservation stopped issuing permits to Vietnamese, poaching rocketed. Yet we have so much horn in state coffers and being carried on live rhinos in the private sector all of which could be used to reduce poaching without harm to the rhino!

It is a fact that the majority of rhino hunters in this country are pseudo hunters and they do not want to kill the animal, they only want the horn. But our regulations (national and international) force them to kill the animal to get a permit to export the horn.

The government and CITES could dramatically immediately reduce the poaching by legalizing the trade in the Rhino horn.

It is time we did something to stop this atrocious slaughter…we need your voice!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Letter published in the Star - March 2011

The following is a letter by Michael Eustace which was printed in the Star on 19 March 2011 :

John Sellar from Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) was reported in the Saturday Star as suggesting that the answer to rhino poaching was that “we try to convince them (Far Eastern people) that rhino horn doesn’t work”.

The Chinese, who are the main market, have been using rhino horn as a medicine for centuries and to hope to change their customs now is probably futile.

On trade Sellar says that “the only people you can sell horn to are criminals and of course there is no way Cites will authorise that”.  The reality is that Cites banned international trade in horn 35 years ago and by so doing ensured that all the trade has been exclusively for criminals ever since.   There were said to have been 60,000 rhino in Africa in 1970.  Given their natural growth rate, that number should have grown to 600,000 today.  But we only have 25,000 or 4% of what we should have had.      That is the Cites scorecard.  

About 500 rhino were killed in Africa last year for their horns.  Africa could provide 500 horns from natural deaths alone, without having to kill one rhino.  The solution is to have a regulated trade in horn not a ban on trade.  For Cites to persist with their failed strategy, and hope for a different outcome, is senseless. 
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“Did you know these rhino facts?”

  • • Rhino are endangered and nearing extinction due to relentless hunting and poaching
  • • Rhino populations have declined by 90 percent since 1970
  • • Rhino are classified in 5 species all of which are endangered. We have two species in Africa – the Black rhino and White rhino
  • • Rhino horn is not a true horn and is made of thickly matted hair
  • • Rhino horn can be removed from the rhino with no ill effect to the animal if done professionally
  • • Rhino horn regrows to a substantial length with in four years
  • • Rhino horn can only be exported as a hunting (killed rhino) trophy
  • • Rhino horn stock piles exist that could be sold to support conservation