Legalising International Trade in Rhino Horn ???

[Richprins]

Me no facebookie!

[nan]

not the permission

[Flutterby]

From the OSCAP FB page:

RHINO WAR NEWS PRESS RELEASE - Herewith the copy of the John Hume Letter to the Editor of the Saturday Star (11/08/12) as requested.

APPEAL ON BEHALF OF ALL RHINOS TO THE ANTI-TRADE LOBBY

I am quite sure that I am the world’s biggest private rhino breeder and probably the overall 3rd biggest after Kruger Park and Ezemvelo KZN, but according to the Facebook brigade I am an ogre, perhaps you can help me work out why.

Last year being 1st of March 2011 to 28th February 2012 I bred 116 rhino, 111 White of which 11 died and 5 Black rhino which are all still alive. We count all miscarriages, abortions, or stillbirths as a dead rhino not to try and make our results look better than they are.

This year so far being 1st March 2012 to 31st July 2012 I bred 47 rhino, all White of which 4 have died. I still expect to exceed last year’s numbers as with the greatest of pleasure and pride I noticed that my rhinos are learning not to calf in the winter months.

As you can see our births of males exceed our births of females. There is now considerable theory on the reason for this and if anyone is interested in these papers, I will gladly forward it to them. The detail is as follows:

Of the 116 animals born last year, 62 were male and 54 female, the deaths were 4 male and 7 female. This year so far the births are 29 male and 18 female and the deaths 2 male and 2 female. Therefore, the animals left alive comprise 85 males and 63 females. To service these 63 females I need no more than 6 males, therefore I have 79 males left.
Current legislation and anti-trade movements dictate that these males are of absolutely no use to me, have no future and will always be useless to man or beast and they may as well be euthanised. Next year I will breed a similar group and the next and the next as my ambition is to breed 200 rhinos per year. You can imagine a group of male rhinos like this will need a huge new territory every year. As well as these males I will also continue to breed a similar group of females which will be used to breed still more rhinos.

What do I do with these males?

I could if I wanted to sell these into the future Pseudo-hunting slaughter market but I don’t want to do that as I have no appetite for slaughtering the rhinos I have so passionately bred. I have nothing against a genuine trophy hunt but a White rhino is not a genuine trophy hunt but rather like slaughtering an ox. I have another objection to the Pseudo-hunting market as they slaughter rhinos at the age of 8 to 10 years in order to get 8 or 10 kg of horn for the medicine market whereas I will guarantee you an average at least 60 kg of horn during that animal’s lifetime. We could use this horn to keep the poachers away from our rhinos and thus save them from the dramatic increase in their slaughter. But of course this is illegal under the current legislation.

So can you help me as to what the Animal Rightists expect me to do with these rhinos?

They collect huge amounts of money (I am told that IFAW collects 200 million dollars a year) but I may not sell my horn. I can sell my rhinos only at way below production cost because nobody wants to farm with rhinos. Obviously I also cannot persuade my fellow farmers to farm with rhinos under these circumstances (i.e. not covering costs). No matter how much I have tried to explain to my detractors that my tame, supplementary-fed, dehorned rhinos running in relatively small paddocks can very easily be released (once the poaching scourge is under control) into our wilderness and game reserve areas and within a very short time become wild horned rhinos, they are unable or unwilling to accept this and I seem to remain the ogre. So the Anti-Legalization NGOs collect all the money, run huge publicity campaigns, influence CITES and governments against legalization and I breed the rhinos, run at a loss and because of what I have explained above will not be able to continue doing what I do.

Non-legalization will also keep the indigenous African people i.e. impoverished communities, emergent black farmers etc. from becoming breeders or protectors of rhino. Our rhino cannot survive without the involvement of the communities, emergent black farmers and commercial farmers and these sectors cannot contribute to the survival of these species without legalization.

On the other hand if I sell my horn production (as you know removing the horn causes no harm and does not change the behavior of the rhino in any way, and it grows again) I will be able to buy new land for my additional rhino and I will be able to buy food and care for all the rhino that I can breed. What a win-win situation for the rhinos and the people who breed them.

With less stress associated with less movement of rhino we can expect a higher ratio of females born in the longer term and legalization coupled with my recommendation in my paper “White rhinos to the rescue” will really see our rhino numbers go from strength to strength.

Furthermore, with all these people enabled and willing to breed rhinos, we would also be able to reintroduce Black and White rhinos to their former African range states (where they are mostly locally extinct), based on the sound principles of allowing communities to care for them, conserve them and generate a sustainable income from them without having to slaughter them.

John Hume

12/08/12

NB :: John Hume is the third largest owner of rhino in the world after SanParks and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife - 25% of SA’s white rhino are owned by the wildlife industry’s game farmer/ranchers

[iNdlovu]

Glaring omissions in this paper. How about the fact that if Mr Hume were able to sell his current stockpile of horn, he would become an instant billionaire. If the male rhino born are no good to him, why not give them to the nation and re-introduce them into our parks. If he sees the legalisation of horn trading as the only way out, would he be prepared to sell his horn at massively discounted prices , enough to cover his costs and a reasonable profit, or would he sell at the current black market prices. I'm not sure that Mr Hume's submissions are driven by the need to save our rhino or to make himself a very wealthy man.

[Richprins]

Ja.

I don't like discussing private people here, but Mr Hume's current stockpile of horn needs to be revealed if he wants to be taken seriously.

The "fellow farmers" make their money from hunts, legally, mostly...at a price greater than potentially selling horn legally.

The male-female ratio is spin nonsense.

[Richprins]

Also, it is very expensive to dart and dehorn rhinos for "upcoming farmers" if they do not have a guaranteed market legally. The idea seems good, but not viable without legislation and a lot of international work!

[Richprins]

Here's the article:


Extinction warning for SA rhino
2012-08-23 12:50




Johannesburg - Rhino could be extinct within the next 25 years if they are not protected, an environmental affairs rhino issue manager said on Thursday.

"At the rate at which these animals are being slaughtered, over the past 20 years or so - if that continued there would be no rhino to talk about in another 25 years or so," Mavuso Msimang told reporters in Johannesburg.

"The rate at which they are born currently is higher than the rate at which they are taken out, for now. They are not about to be extinct, not next year or shortly... But how do we contain this to have natural growth rates?"

Msimang was addressing reporters at the Johannesburg Country Club on the consultative dialogues the department of environmental affairs has had with various parties in the rhino industry.

He said the purpose of the dialogue would be to report to government and make various recommendations in order to save the rhino.

Legalising trade

SA had a responsibility to conserve and protect rhino because it had the biggest rhino population in the world. The rhino was also one of the "big five".

Msimang said there had been serious consultations which he hoped, at the end of all the discussions, would influence policy.

"Government is serious in seeking solutions," he said.

The issuing of permits, legalising trade, technology, intelligence and safety and security were among topics discussed.

"Security has to be priority number one... Security must be beefed up and it must be treated in a very sophisticated manner," he said.

"You require a combination of activities to save rhino... that includes good conservation strategies."

Msimang said the arguments for and against trade also raised important issues including the estimation of the demand for rhino horn.

"If it could be established that trading is going to increase security for the rhino, it is going to encourage propagation of the rhino species - if it could - I would find it difficult to recommend against it."

Msimang said the trade and ownership of rhino horns was a fad internationally.

"The use of a horn is a symbol of wealth.

"As long as you have people who have money to dispose of and as long as South Africa produces rhino and is unable to protect them - the threat to the population will continue," he said.

Msimang said the consultations continued and would formally end in September.

This year 339 rhino had been killed in SA, the department said on Wednesday.
- SAPA

The underlined part is interesting...

[Penga Ndlovu]

The Damian Mander Report.
I agree with Damian that the market for rhino horn is unlimited and that efforts to ‘educate’ orientals out of believing in the medicinal qualities of rhino horn are doomed to failure – pointless.
I agree with him that the only way to save our wild rhino is by more effective policing – rigid para-military protection.
But I cannot accept his dangerous assumption that the S.A. government is capable of protecting our rhino - if only it is given the money to do so, by legalising the trade in rhino horn. This conclusion ignores the root of the problem. Rhino are not dying because the trade in horn is banned. Rhinos prospered for decades in S.A. -even though there was a trade ban.
The rhino is merely one symptom of a far deeper and broader problem: the catastrophic effects of unrestrained corruption, misuse of and incompetence at all levels of African governments. Giving large amounts of money to the S.A. government to fight rhino poaching is like giving a barrel of beer to a drunkard.
So when Damian Mander advocates that the trade in horn be regulated by the South African and Asian governments, I am afraid that he is consigning rhinos to extinction. Without effective and efficient controls to distinguish between legal and illegal horn, the poaching industry will flourish along with the new legalised trade.
Anyone with practical experience of the S.A. conservation permit system will know that it is just a bad joke and should be abolished. No permit system at all is better than a bad one. The granting of permits for hunting of rhino by Asian prostitutes, the granting of export permits for live rhino to destinations as obviously wrong as ‘Thai Skin and Hide Industries’, the mind-numbing, futile bureaucracy of the whole permit system: this is the system for which Mander advocates obscene amounts of funding.
As for the rhino farmers, they might as well be farming with sheep or cattle, since what they do is a commercial operation having nothing to do with true conservation. They boast an increase in Rhino numbers. But anyone who thinks that numbers alone are the true measure of conservation is an idiot - or an economist. These rhino are not free roaming or part of a functioning ecosystem. They are captive and captive-bred. Worse, they are a distraction from the crux of the problem, which is government’s abject failure to focus on rigidly protecting all our wildlife in our game reserves.
The survival of rhino and all other wildlife is a political issue, not an economic one.

Chris Mercer.

[iNdlovu]

100% agree with Chris Mercer (give that man a Bells)
I have said for a long time, ban all rhino hunting etc, then any horn is an illegal horn. There is absolutely no way in this world that there are enough rhino left to "flood the market", the demand is just way to high, so controlled rhino horn trade won't even touch sides.
The government has to take the responsibility and get serious about anti-poaching. In my book, the efforts at the moment are giving the problem lip service and nothing more. SanParks management with their comments of "it will only be a problem in 2015' are only adding fuel to their total ineptitude in running our parks. It's a joke.

[Flutterby]

Chris Mercer has hit the nail on the head!!