Melanie Gosling
Environment Writer
A NEW “rhino plan” is set to raise R500 million a year for rhino conservation through a voluntary “bed levy” in the tourism industry.
The plan, called the integrated rhino poaching strategy, was launched in the city yesterday by four conservationists: two fiercely opposed to trading in rhino horn – Colin Bell and Ian Michler – and two who believe trading is the way to go – Dawie Roodt and Braam Malherbe.
The plan was the brainchild of “extreme adventurer” Malherbe, who said yesterday it had been born out of frustration with the rhino poaching conversation that had focused on the in-fighting between the “pro-trade and anti-trade” lobby groups for years.
“As long as we’re fighting, we’re aiding the poaching criminals, because fighting among each other is divide and rule.”
Malherbe said the four of them, “locked in a room” with a mediator, agreed that it was highly unlikely that Cites would allow rhino horn to be traded legally in the next five years.
“So what are we going to do in those five years? What is our interim plan? We sat down and looked at what we agreed on. We agreed if we don’t have serious amounts of money for anti-poaching – from night-vision equipment to upliftment programmes in local communities – we won’t get anywhere. Anton Rupert said conservation without funding is just conversation, and he’s right.”
One of the pillars of the plan was the creation of a Tourism Conservation Fund to support a “multi-pronged approach to take the crime syndicates head-on and put them out of business.”
To date, the local tourism industry had played a unco-ordinated and low-key role in the rhino poaching crisis. The plan envisages that a voluntary contribution, or “bed levy”, added to guest invoices, could reverse this without any negative impact on business. If 50 percent of the travel industry signed up to the fund, it is estimated that half-a-billion rand could be raised annually.
Funding could also be raised through the expansion of a “My School” type of credit-care projects, which already raised more than R200 000 a month for rhino conservation.
The money would be spent on security, technology, DNA laboratories, programmes in rural communities living near national parks and strengthening the criminal justice system and other initiatives.
Michler said the plan was a “more reasonable, logical way” of dealing with rhino poaching.
“We said: ‘Let’s take the rhino trade issue off the table and let’s focus on all the issues we agree on and co-operate around that’. Colin and I had to concede some things and Dawie and Braam had to as well. It is the the first time two opposing camps have come together to present a unified response,” Michler said.