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.