At the end of the 19th century, a group of 20 to 50 southern white rhinoceroses were discovered in the Hluhluwe Imfolozi region of South Africa. The species had been thought lost to the guns and trophy rooms of colonial hunters. Today their population is more than 20,000.
The program that brought the species back from the scrapheap of extinction is considered to be one of conservation’s great success stories. However, a massive surge in poaching threatens to undo more than a century of careful protection and management.
The South African government on Thursday last week reported that poachers killed 1,215 southern white rhinos last year — 200 more than the year before and 1,202 more than in 2007.
Illustration: YUSHA
The southern white rhino is the world’s only rhino species not considered threatened by the International Union of the Conservation of Nature. Before 2010, the population was increasing by 4.5 percent each year, but by 2012, poaching had slowed the growth rate to just 0.7 percent. Southern white rhino numbers might now be declining for the first time in a century.
Poaching is driven by the growing market for rhino horn in increasingly affluent East Asia. The horn is primarily made out of a material similar to keratin — the stuff that makes up hair and fingernails. It has been used in traditional Asian medicine for centuries. The now mostly extinct or endangered Asian rhino species were hunted because of a misbelief their horn could treat fever and cerebrovascular disease.
In recent years rhino horn has been endowed with further fantastical properties that treat cancer and cure hangovers. The common notion that rhino horn is used as an aphrodisiac in Asia is derogatory and untrue, according to wildlife trade observers TRAFFIC. However, a recent survey found evidence that the belief was prevalent in Chinese society.
Rhino horn has also become a “Veblen good,” said Daniel Stiles, an independent wildlife trafficking consultant who works with various anti-poaching non-governmental organizations (NGO) and the UN. This is a commodity that grows more desirable the more expensive it becomes. One kilogram of rhino horn can cost up to ￡45,000 (US$67,800).
“The horn is now also being made into bangles and other status ornaments for the wealthy to show off with,” Stiles said.
Nothing will curb poaching while the payoffs remain so high, he added.
“There is only one solution: Kill demand. Convince consumers that rhino horn has no medicinal value whatsoever,” he said.
Stiles said the use of horn as a status symbol “needs to be attacked forcibly by creating stigma, as with fur coats in the West.”
Public education is the key tool available to combat the traffickers’ business model, said Davin O’Regan, a wildlife trafficking expert at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies.
In a survey of Chinese people by Wild Aid last year, two-thirds of respondents thought rhino horn was obtained legally from rhinos that had died naturally or been farmed. Half did not realize it was illegal to purchase horn in China.
“After I heard that there is no difference between a rhino horn and a human fingernail in nature, I think it might have no especially great medicinal value,” a woman from Beijing told the survey.
O’Regan said this shows the scope for public education in the East.
“There is a lot of room for addressing these information gaps and legal misunderstandings, which should put a dent in rhino horn demand, its price and eventually its supply via poaching. However, given the current pace of poaching, such action must be urgent,” he said.
TRAFFIC spokesperson Richard Thomas said engagement in Vietnam and China is still in its early stages. However, encouraging initiatives have already emerged, including workshops with Vietnamese traditional medical practitioners and a deal with the world’s — and China’s — largest online trader Alibaba to stamp out illegal animal products.
Thomas said these efforts are simply scratching the surface, but added that the approach has encouraging historical precedents.
“Japan was once the world’s largest illegal ivory consumer, but today barely features in illicit ivory trade. In the 1970s, Yemen and South Korea were major rhino horn consumers, but again barely feature if at all. It’s all about changing what’s fashionable — and fashions will and do change, although rarely overnight,” he said.
The international crime syndicates that run rhino horn from Africa to Asia are influential. How much money changes hands between officials in Vietnam and China and the traffickers is unknown and a dangerous area for NGOs to get into. Vietnamese officials have been implicated in the trade. One diplomat was filmed taking receipt of rhino horn in 2008. It is difficult to know what effect this will have on efforts to engage with domestic politicians and stamp the trade out.
About 90 percent of southern white rhino live in South Africa, with smaller populations in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Mozambique. The burgeoning wealth of Asia is flowing into the hands of African poachers in return for lucrative contraband that is relatively low risk and easy to attain.
WWF global species program director Carlos Drews said that international crime gangs have overwhelmed South African conservation efforts.
“Killing on this scale shows how rhino poaching is being increasingly undertaken by organized criminal syndicates. The nation’s brave rangers are doing all they can to protect the rhinos, but only a concerted global effort can stop this illegal trade,” he said.
South African Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa said the nation moved about 100 rhinos from “poaching hotspots” to safer areas last year and made 386 arrests, 43 more than in 2013. Even so, the poaching figures were “worryingly high,” she said.
“But given the highly organized nature of the syndicates, we believe these figures could be considerably higher were it not for our interventions,” she said.
Interpol environmental crime program manager David Higgins said South Africans have been doing a good job of making arrests at the primary poaching level, but higher level operators hide across borders in Mozambique and overseas. He said the syndicates can “absolutely” be broken so long as more funding is made available in the right areas.
“We really need to have stronger transnational investigative focus if we’re going to address this,” he said. “There needs to be stronger financial investment into Mozambique because at the moment the motivation is probably there. They’ve got some political will, but they don’t have the financial mechanism to be able to allow them to engage.”
The Kruger National Park in South Africa is home to about half of the world’s southern white rhinos. It is also the population most targeted by poachers.
“The South African government has thrown an enormous amount of resources, both financial and in terms of manpower, at anti-poaching efforts in Kruger. There is little more that can be done on the ground,” International Fund for Animal Welfare southern Africa director Jason Bell said.
Stiles said that “boots on the ground and drones in the air” will only act as a band-aid when confronted by the extreme value of the horn. Kruger’s annual anti-poaching operations budget is about ￡1.5 million. Yet as much as ￡200 million worth of rhino horns might have been removed from the park (based on a value of ￡45,000/kg) last year. Well-resourced poachers have the means to offer rangers attractive bribes to leak information, turn a blind eye, leave open gates on electrified anti-poacher fences, or “even pull the trigger” themselves, Stiles said.
Private reserves, as opposed to national parks, have been shown to be an effective tool against the poaching of rhinos and elephants in Africa.
“Private reserves tend to be better managed than public ones, regardless of the size. There tends to be less corruption with private reserves because the staff are paid and treated better than government rangers,” Stiles said.
A lot of things need to go right for the poaching business to be undermined. The International Union for Conservation of Nature said the southern white rhino could be listed as vulnerable as early as next year, but poaching is merciless and has no respect for the conservation status of a species, or interest in a sustainable population. In fact, within the brutal logic of the rhino horn market lies a cynical imperative to drive the species to extinction. Investors are buying up horns and banking them, waiting for the day when the last rhino is killed and the horn price soars.
“Even if poaching becomes harder as the number of rhinos decreases, that will not prevent poaching,” O’Regan said. “This is the same phenomenon we have seen in the overexploitation of world fishery populations, tigers, numerous bird species and rare forest products. As these populations decline, the price for their parts increases. Consequently, as long as individual poachers have a financial incentive, they will pursue an animal to its extinction.”
Other species and populations of rhino show rarity is no protection. In 2010, what is thought to have been Vietnam’s last rhino was found dead with its horn cut off. Only five northern white rhinos survived after the species was destroyed during the 20th century. A little more than 5,000 African black rhinos remain. The greater one-horned rhino of India and Nepal is down to its last few thousand and the Sumatran rhino numbers less than 100. Yet poachers still pursue them all.
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