Private game reserves are sitting on an estimated six-ton rhino horn stockpile worth around $360 million (R4.8 billion) at current prices, according to the chairman of the Private Rhino Owners’ Association, Pelham Jones.
Jones, a member of the 22-person government panel looking into the feasibility of rhino horn trade as a means of curbing poaching, said most private rhino owners urgently want to be allowed to sell the horn to offset their rhino security costs, which collectively amounted to R350 million a year.
“That’s the cost just for hard-core rhino security, not for lodge security. We’ve heard people say private rhino owners are greedy, that they just want to cash in on the demand and make money, but none of us who bought rhino years ago bought them to make money from trade in horn.
“But we’re spending a lot of money on protecting rhino and we’ve given it our best shot for years.
“More APUs (anti-poaching units), more guns, more night sights, but despite this, and despite the number of poachers that are arrested and even killed, it doesn’t stop. The numbers are going higher. The trade ban from 1977 hasn’t worked, it’s just created a massive illegal trade,” Jones said.
The estimated cost of protecting rhino in South Africa, including all national, provincial and private reserves, was around R1bn.
Jones said most private rhino owners dehorned their animals as a way to protect them from poachers’ guns. The dehorning itself was expensive and had to be done every 18 months. This fed a growing stockpile of rhino horn, which also had to be protected at a high cost.
Jones said private reserves understood that trade in horn was not a “silver bullet”, but believed it must be part of a package of interventions to help stem the demand.
Environment Minister Edna Molewa appointed a committee earlier this year to investigate the rhino poaching situation and make recommendations to the government on a range of related issues.
The most controversial one was whether a proposal for the legalisation of trade in rhino horn should be made at next year’s meeting of the International Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Once the committee has submitted the report and made a recommendation to Molewa, which will not be before next month, the report has to go through an interdepartmental review, then a position will be tabled before the cabinet.