Alarming increase in Rhino poaching - Dr Andre Uys

Having been involved in both the private wildlife ranching industry as well as the conservation sector for more than a decade, it is with dismay and alarm that I feel the need to share my five cents worth over the alarming increase in rhino poaching in the sub-region over the past 3 years.

Rhino poaching in South Africa began to escalate at an alarming rate, and continues to do so, since the implementation of the Threatened and Protected Species regulations in 2007. Officials have called this coincidence, but looking at statistical graphs, the similarities to ‘cause and effect’ are much more apparent than coincidence. Up until the implementation of TOPS, and since the issuing of the first white rhino hunting permits in the late 1960’s, white rhino were prospering on private land in South Africa. Rhino (both black and white) were highly sort after game farm species, not only for their aesthetic value, but mainly for the financial incentives associated with owning them. Game farming or wildlife ranching, like any other farming or agricultural sector, is about rands and cents and ultimately, return on investment.

Whilst many animal rightists, welfare organisations and uninformed members of the public may find the concept of “farming” with “wild” animals abhorrent, it is our forward thinking South African game farmers who have successfully created a value for many species by applying novel farming methods and agricultural principles to developing an industry in our country which is marginal for livestock production. The added spin-off of this industry is conservation of rare and endangered species and preservation of habitat which would have otherwise been destroyed by livestock or crop farming.

The value in species created by the wildlife ranching sector has had huge benefits for our conservation agencies who earn in excess of R100 million per annum through the sale of live animals to the private sector. The bulk of this sum of money comes from rhino sales. Were these transactions not to take place, this substantial amount of money would have to be realized by government or donor agencies in order for our conservation agencies to be able to continue with the wonderful work they do.

The financial incentives which drew private wildlife ranchers into owning rhino have all but disappeared. Rhino poaching is increasing daily, it is life-threatening to have anything that resembles a rhino on your property, the regulatory authorities have restricted the industry so much and so ineffectively that only once your paperwork weighs as much as your rhino are you able to do anything with them, and security for your rhino now costs more than they are worth. The end result being that most rhino owners want to get rid of their animals and would be rhino owners are far better off investing money in alternative species which they are able to utilize.

The most recent spate of rhino poaching incidents and horn thefts have one thing in common, they were either inside jobs or possible leakage of information from provincial permit offices. TOPS permits for rhino ownership, translocation, capture, treatment, dehorning and or hunting can take anywhere between four to 6 weeks to be issued and sometimes even longer. During this time a permit application form with all the private rancher’s details float around provincial offices for all and sundry to see, this includes physical addresses, number of rhino on property, number of horns in safe, etc., etc. and all the while, your rhino you purchased on live auction, has to remain standing in holding facilities where they are sitting ducks for poachers at your financial risk. How does the private sector ensure that their information is kept confidential and safely out of the reach of would be criminals?? How does an industry which is worth billions of rands to the country function, when the menial task of issuing a permit to translocate a live animal takes 4 to 6 weeks and very often longer, to issue. Perhaps this would be tolerable were our regulatory authorities able to provide any meaningful information gleaned from this permit system, but how is this possible when the permit applicant has to provide the copies of each and every document issued by the regulatory authorities allowing you to own rhino, as they do not have them on file. We have 9 provinces, all of which, do not apply the same regulations, Mpumpulanga for instance (and this happens to be the most effective provincial authority) is to date still issuing TOPS permits, whilst most other provinces seem to interpret the regulations in different ways. Is it not time to centralize the permits, or even better, distinguish between wildlife ranching and conservation, and allow the ranchers to continue unhindered under the department of agriculture, as do the livestock farmers?? The wildlife ranching sector, were it given the opportunity to prosper through utilization, both consumptive and nonconsumptive, is the one and only buffer which we have which will ensure the future survival of our rhino populations in protected areas.

The age old cliché “if it pays it stays” is going to be particularly pertinent to rhino conservation decision makers in the very near future. It seems bizarre to me that private rhino owners, who have invested millions of rand on game farming land and animals seem to be left out of the decision making loop. The way I see the future for rhino conservation is one of two ways, either the penalties need to be so harsh that if you so much look at a rhino horn you spend the rest of your days in prison! However, if these penalties are only applicable to South Africa and not to countries where the demand for horn stems from, this will most certainly be an ineffective measure, and the likelihood of this happening in the east where they have been using rhino horn in medicines for the past 7000 years is all but miniscule. Added to that, implementing these types of penalties in a country where you are highly unlikely to spend your life behind bars even for rape and murder seems questionable. The alternative is legalising the trade in horn, and controlling it so that each and every horn is traceable to the farm of origin (possible with many other agricultural products), and allowing a market to develop where supply, demand and price balance each other out. Unfortunately there is no middle road, and whatever the decision may be it will have to be made quickly and implemented strictly otherwise most of us will see the rhino become extinct before the end of our lifetimes…..we seem to forget that between 1960 and 1990 approximately 100 000 rhino were poached on the African  continent..we only have 20 000 and I cant see them lasting all that long if the situation carries on in the current vein.

Dr Andre Uys, Veterinarian

Quotes & Thoughts by John Hume

1. EMERGENT BLACK FARMERS - NEGATIVE

Under the present legislation emergent black farmers will never contribute to rhino conservation (unless they happen to be in the tourism industry), as there is not enough profit incentive for farmers.

2. EMERGENT BLACK FARMERS – POSITIVE

The Kruger Park started its white rhino population 40 years ago with 336 white rhinos.  And now they conservatively estimate a population of 10 000. 

Can you imagine if we could get worldwide sponsorship for the Kruger National Park to supply the emergent black farmer with 1000 white rhinos over the next 5 years and we gave the farmers the profit incentive to breed these white rhinos and keep them alive to old age, how many white rhinos they could contribute in 50 years time? 

Imagine if this concept works and we could export live white rhinos to the rest of Africa then 200 000 white rhinos in Africa in 50 years time seems a very achievable goal.

This is not pie in the sky.  Africans are excellent capitalists given a profit incentive and rhino horn at today’s prices in the East would yield them a handsome return every year and I predict that they would guard them with their lives to ensure this return. 

3. INCENTIVE

Western capitalism was built on the word “Incentive” and because it was so successful it was possible for us to develop hugely successful conservation projects.  Even governments were supportive of these projects because the governments were able to collect taxes from a successful capitalist economy.  Now when we need to distribute the over populated colonies of white rhinos from both public and private lands, the opposite principle is applied to new rhino farmers who have no incentive to farm with white rhinos.  Why can’t we see that this will have a negative effect on future populations and in fact turn many farmers away from the legal routes to the illegal ones.

4. INCENTIVE         

Modern man has been an abject failure in accomplishing projects when there is no incentive.  Incentive of course has many faces.  It could be fame, political power, military power, recognition (i.e. artists, scientists), medical achievements, but the one we know best is capitalism. 

We know it works in farming, whether to increase the farmer’s stock or crops or infrastructure like tunnels, dams and erosion control. Give the farmer a capitalist incentive and he will make it work.  Why do we do the exact opposite for the poor rhino and dis-incentivize the farmer from increasing white rhino numbers.  All regulations, but now especially TOPS, has the effect of making a farmer want to sell his rhino (and the rhino needs the opposite from his farmer).  Unfortunately if the seller does not get his price from other farmers, which is very likely because they also do not want to breed rhino for the same reason, he will sell them to an illegal hunter/dealer, the rhino will be killed and we and the white rhinos have lost again. 

The banning of the sale of white rhinos to China will exacerbate this by putting more white rhinos on the local market and pushing the price down and more of our adult breeding stock will end up being killed by illegal hunter/dealers. 

Returning white rhinos to Appendix 1 of CITES would be the death knell of new breeding projects by the private sector. 

5.       STIMULI

Humans have the capacity to react positively or negatively to stimuli.  They may circumvent rules or laws, which are unpalatable to them. But definitely they will react to success in achieving their goal and capitalism is simply a great stimulus.  White rhinos have this huge advantage in being able to supply this stimulus so why can’t we give them the opportunity to do this and benefit from the positive aspects of human capabilities. 

6.       A QUESTION TO POSE TO THE HIERACHY OF CITES

If the government changed the rules for the merino sheep farmers in this country and made it illegal to sell the wool from their merino sheep, how many merino sheep do you think will there be left in this country in 20 years time? 

Unfortunately this is what you have done to the rhino farmers in South Africa.

This aspect was not so devastating in the past as the national parks were still filling up and moving white rhinos to parks which had no white rhinos and the private sector were buying white rhinos for a combination of tourism, hunting and breeding, but now these requirements have been satisfied to a very large extent and we need the ordinary farmer to make his land available for white rhinos and unless we give them a profit incentive we are going to fail. 

This situation is hugely exacerbated by the fact that some rhino farmers have already bred up their numbers and are looking for sales which are dwindling and many farmers don’t care if they sell their animals to someone who will kill them especially if that buyer offers the added advantage of cash and therefore no VAT and no income tax.

7.       COMMUNISM AND INCENTIVE

During my recent trip through Moldova I was struck by the ancient machinery, infrastructure and methods of cultivation.  Very little irrigation, a lot of which was done by hand, no tunnels and yet the population is very well educated, intelligent and it seemed strange that it could be so agriculturally backward.

On questioning my relatives the answers were simple.  Before the collapse of communism in 1990 there was very little incentive and progression, they merely had relatively easy targets to meet and after 1990 no help in changing from the old system to what could have become one of the most productive farming areas in the world.  They were simply given no help to buy new machinery or infrastructure and the price was kept artificially low to enable the poor to buy food. 

This policy of no incentive suddenly struck me as being a parallel to our current rhino policy, which has also not worked.  No changing with the times, no vision for the future, a sad story especially as we like to point fingers at the communists for never incentivising their citizens.

8.       LOVERS OF ANIMALS

As lovers of animals and conservationists our judgement should not be based on our likes or dislikes and our first priority should be to increase animal numbers as much as possible with as many of them living in situations as close to their natural environment as possible. 

But we must not exclude situations that are not exactly what their natural environment is but where they can live happily and breed successfully.

Just as we would accept sacrificing a number of them to their natural predators we should be prepared to sacrifice a number of them to humans to eat or use as trophies or for any reason that makes them more commercially viable and therefore more desirable for farmers to want to farm with them.

White rhinos fortunately can escape 99% of these causes of mortality as they have few natural predators and if we see to it that humans are not forced to kill them because they simply cannot get hold of the horn in any other way the sky is really the limit for the numbers of white rhinos that can inhabit the earth in a 100 years from now.

9.       FARMERS WANTING TO KILL

As lovers of animals and hating to see them die, some farmers wonder why we accept that predators in our national parks can kill their prey and we hope that the ecosystem survives and prospers (even with our help to control diseases, etc.) and that some of us will not accept that the owner of a game ranch who supplies the animals with all they need to survive and prosper cannot use some of his animals to eat or to sell as trophies in order for him to be more well equipped to look after the rest of his animals and let his ranch prosper.

We are so lucky that with white rhinos we have an alternative to offer the farmer which will make him avoid killing his white rhinos at any cost and I then wonder where on earth this immense stupidity could come from where we are encouraging him to kill them.                 

10.    WHITE RHINOS ALMOST EXTINCT

White rhinos were considered to be extinct in the Transvaal by 1896 and shortly after that a small population was discovered in Zululand.

Initially the Natal Provincial game reserves brought the white rhino back from the brink of extinction by increasing their numbers so dramatically that they were able to donate to the Kruger National Park.

The KNP did a wonderful job in increasing their reintroduced rhino where only a relatively small number of animals were moved from Natal in the sixties and seventies (total of 336 by 1973) to total over 10 000 today.   

After this private individuals also started buying white rhinos where a lot of these were required for a combination of breeding and tourism and more lately for hunting. 

The numbers have now increased so dramatically that we are running out of national park space in South Africa, we are running out of tourism requirements in the private sector, we are running out of rich people who simply want them because they are a rare species but we are not running out of people who want to kill them, either legally for trophies or illegally for the horn.

Because of all these factors we need to spread the breeding of white rhinos to a normal type of farming operation (i.e. capitalist farmer who wants to farm any animal that can give him a return) and this would apply especially well to the new emergent black farmers as well as all the current farmers who are not wealthy and need to make a return on their investment and once again fortunately for the white rhinos they are ideally equipped to supply this return and increase there number prolifically.

11.    TIP OF THE ICEBERG

The number of rhinos we lose to poaching I am convinced is the tip of the iceberg. 

We never hear about the farmers who sell direct to the illegal hunter, we never hear about the sticky end that a large amount of rhinos bought on auctions come to, we never hear about private sales to people who move them on a legal permit and then kill them when they get to their safe destination.

These combine to make up the bulk of the iceberg, which is menacing our rhino numbers from below the visible surface.

12.    THE FACT THAT THE SUPPLY OF A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF RHINO HORN INTO THE MARKET WILL NOT INCREASE POACHING BUT DECREASE IT.

It is incredible how stupid clever people can be and the future of the poor Rhinos is now in the hands of many organizations, foundations like CITIES, Traffic, WWF and many others who actively discourage people from breeding Rhinos and therefore inadvertently help the illegal dealers and poachers in many many ways. The poor Rhino.

 If the legalization of the trade in Rhino horn was to be unsuccessful in dramatically reducing the poaching it could always be reversed and very little harm done but if it worked it would have a tremendously positive result in saving the lives of many rhino which I believe it ill as the eastern people at the moment have to buy illegal horn as there is simply no legal horn available to them. While we have been trying the current program over the last 40 years approximately 100,000 rhino have been slaughtered in Africa.

Rhino Horn Harvesting

When poachers kill a rhino just for its horn, they are killing the future supply, especially when they kill the young or female rhino. To see how painless it is for the horn to be cut, click to the video shown here.

The following article by Dr Krappies Els: SAHGCA Manager for Conservation makes very interesting reading

“THE SAHGCA APPROACH TO  RHINO CONSERVATION
Dr Krappies Els:  SAHGCA Manager for Conservation

A pro-active approach:
The South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association (SAHGCA) is of the opinion that the only manner in which to realistically save our rhinos, is to open the national and international trade in the animals and in their product (their horn).  Placing a high value on the living animal and its product is also the only way to curtail the destructive and highly unnecessary poaching (read death) of these animals.

Some Facts
Of all white and black rhino in the world, >92% are today found in this country.  Of the 15,000 rhino in the world in 2005, the South African government (national and provincial) owned 69.7%,  22.1% were owned by South African game ranchers, 6.8% were owned by other African countries, and 1.4% were owned by zoos all over the world.

The market for rhino and their product:
The important role of rhino on auctions is confirmed by the fact that between 1986 and 2009, only 0.94% of all animals sold at game auctions were rhino, while their sales represented 28% of the total turnover at all auctions.

The rhino market is largely driven by the sale of surplus animals at auction where the price was determined by trophy hunters up to 2009.  Surplus adult male animals are mostly hunted while surplus sub-adult animals are mostly exported to overseas zoos and game parks. The average price for rhino remained constant between 1990 and 1996 but increased between 1997 and 2002.  Between 2003 and 2005 the price dropped because of the saturation of the trophy hunting market.  However, between 2006 and 2009 prices again climbed because of the large number of especially Vietnamese hunters entering the market for so-called medicinal hunts (for the horn alone).

The principle and largest market for rhino product remains in Asia – the market that drives poaching. The Asian value judgement attached to the medicinal value of natural products has been developed over more than 5,000 years and is an integral part of millions of people’s everyday life. In Seoul alone, there are 11 colleges, 20 hospitals, 4,700 clinics, 7,000 medical practitioners, and 2,352 chemists solely focussed on the practice of Asian medicine (medicinal products include tiger bone, lion bone, rhino horn, etc.).

It is, therefore, SAHGCA’s contention that it will be easier to effect  change among Western nature lovers and scientists to keep rhinos alive through efforts of sustainable use, rather than to try and change a 5,000 year old cultural trait among millions of people in Asia (i.e. China, Korea, Vietnam).

Poaching:
Consecutive moratoriums on the internal trade in rhino (2006), the implementation of the TOPS permitting system (2008), and the ban on hunting of rhino in South Africa (2009), has unfortunately had a direct impact on the increase in poaching of these animals.  Different sets of regulations has made the legal hunting of rhino more and more difficult until it was stopped in 2009. 

There is a direct correlation between the imposition of Regulations and the increase in numbers of animals poached.  In the 24 years between 1980 and 2004, 148 rhino were poached at an average of 6 animals per annum.  In the 5 years between 2006 and 2010, 566 animals were poached at an average of 94 animals per annum (a massive increase directly linked to the above mentioned moratoriums).  Of the 566 animals poached in this period, 333 were poached in 2010 alone (149 in Kruger, 57 in North-West, 52 in Limpopo and 38 in KwaZulu-Natal). At the time of writing this article (March 2011), the figure already stands on 51 animals killed through poaching activities for this year.

Despite the adaptation of seeming better regulations after 2005, better policing did not follow as the Threatened Specie Unit of the SAPS were disbanded.  Specialised knowledge and co-ordination in provincial governments where conservation law enforcement takes place, also became fragmented because of a lack of applicable capacity.

Because poaching of rhino had a low incidence for so long (1980 to 2004) there are only anti-poaching units in national parks and on provincial level with no private security companies, for instance, specialising in poaching of high value game animals (i.e. rhino).

Action:
Against this background it is SAHGCA’s contention that the only realistic manner to truly and effectively implement conservation of our rhinos, is to responsibly trade the animals and their product.

SAHGCA’s focus is in conjunction with the Wildlife Industry Trust focussed on assisting the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at Onderstepoort to log the DNA profiles of all rhino in this country.  Be that of the animals owned by government or by the private sector. 

Before we can trade in the products of these animals, we must be able to show that we can manage their numbers and their product  with  accountability.  Managing the animals’ numbers  has been proven over time.  Its the management of their product which present us with the biggest challenge.  That’s why we must be able to positively identify each animal and its horn with the animal’s DNA profile.

By implementing the DNA database to function as envisaged, data will have to be populated and maintained. The advantage is that game ranchers will then also have a database for sourcing the best genetic breeding “partners” for cows in smaller herds on ranches (to prevent inbreeding).

In addition, the logging of DNA profiles will largely assist in effecting guilty verdicts for rhino poachers as the product they have poached will be immediately traceable to the exact animal.  A high profile poacher has already been convicted through DNA evidence brought before court in this manner.

Rhino are of much higher value when they are alive and thriving, as opposed to when they are dead.  That is why only responsible utilisation of rhino products presents any real conservation benefit and incentive, and why the association has entered the fight to rather keep our:  Rhinos Alive !”