We Rhino conservationists find ourselves in the most incredibly bizarre position, where we can sell a rhino horn to almost anybody and he or she can export it legally and can do pretty much what they like with it in almost any country in the world, but this is only if the rhino is hunted and killed.
If the rhino is alive or if it had died from natural causes there is absolutely nothing you can do with the rhino horn, so if you desire to own a rhino horn for any reason whatsoever you simply have to kill the animal.
This not withstanding that you can cut horn off with no ill effect to the rhino and it regrows and makes it a less likely target to poachers. The only other way to export a rhino horn is on the live animal. Therefore either way a horn leaves Africa, we lose the hen (meaning the live rhino) that lays the golden egg (in our case the horn).
The reason is of course that, Cites, WWF, our Government and other bodies who quite frankly should know better, insist that the policies which have been in place for the last 40 years should remain in place, whilst probably 100,000 rhino have been slaughtered.
Legalizing the trade in rhino horn would encourage private rhino owners to not only keep their herds (some are selling their rhino due to the high cost of their protection and little ability to profit from them) but to grow their herds, some for the sole purpose of horn production, which would result in large populations of rhino scattered around the country.
Hopefully we can encourage emergent farmers to farm with rhino which would be much more profitable than their current farming operations and maybe even spread this form of farming to other parts of Africa.
A sustainable source of legal horn from such farms would inevitably lessen the poaching pressure in our parks and reserves where rhino will always be kept in their horned state.
The continued persecution of the private rhino farmer through excessive red tape and prohibition on sales, movements and hunts is tantamount to the government acting as a recruiting agent for a farmer prepared to get involved with illegal rhino horn dealers.
I pose a simple question; how many Merino sheep would be left in the country ten years from now if the government passed a law that says you can keep them with permits and a huge amount of red tape, shear their wool with a government official supervising you and then never sell the wool?
I think very few sheep would remain in S.A and yet that is exactly the policy we are applying and the route we are following with our rhino.
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