SAVE THE RHINO
Poachers understand economics. Conservationists had better understand it, to
AS RECENTLY as 1970, 65,000 black rhinos roamed Africa Today, the total is barely 2,000. The steepest collapse in numbers has been in Zimbabwe, which in mid-1991 thought i had 1,400 animals but could find, a year later, only 430. The pace of poaching has been relentless and is accelerating. In desperation, several countries have tried removing rhino horns For a while, that seemed to deter poachers. Now dehorned rhinos seem just as likely to be killed as the rest. Some wildlife specialists even suspect a systematic attempt by well-organised gangs to exterminate the rhino in the wild. Their motive is profit. The way to protect the rhino, therefore, is to change the rules that benefit the profiteers.
Horn of a dilemma
Trade in rhino horn, which has been used in Chinese medicine for more than 4,000 years, has been banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species since 1977. This week even South Korea became a member of CITES, with an obligation to outlaw imports (which it says it does already). The imports will continue, expensively and illegally: the faith of Chinese pharmacists in the healing powers of a pinch of ground horn, the increasing wealth of South-East Asia and the poverty and lawlessness of Africa are potent forces. TRAFFIC, a body that monitors the trade in wildlife, knows of stockpiles of horn in several countries. Wipe out the rhino, and those stockpiles become gold mines.
The trade ban has failed to save the black rhino. True, the ban on trade in ivory appears to have helped the elephant—but attitudes to ivory-buying have changed dramatically in the rich industrial countries that were the main markets. if ivory cannot be flaunted, it is not worth buying. Rhino horn is bought for health, not show: demand will take far longer to dry up.
Conservationists need a new strategy. One would be to accept that the remaining rhinos be preserved for their economic value, not just their environmental glamour. Horn from dehorned rhinos might, like the hair from Peru’s protected vicuñas, be sold under strict controls. The 240 kilos cropped from the 59 white rhinos in Hwange national park in Zimbabwe in 1991 would have supplied at least two-thirds of Taiwan’s annual consumption—and rhino horns, unlike elephant tusks, grow again. Dehorning rhinos can cost $1,000 an animal; in South Africa, hunters will pay $7,000 to shoot the beasts with tranquillising darts. They pay far more to kill them—perhaps $30,000 for white rhinos. A permit to shoot a black rhino (at present, not legally hunted anywhere) could fetch enough to double the budget of a Zimbabwean game park.
Only if rhinos earn their keep are poor African countries likely to find the money to protect them. Conservationists who dislike or distrust that policy have only one alternative. That is to finance the collection of rhino sperm and eggs, in the hope that, one day soon, zoos will master the art of artificially inseminating rhinos. Then, if the beast disappears in the wild, it may eventually be possible to re-establish it from captive populations—that is, if Chinese pharmacists have found more rhino-friendly ways to make medicine.
Source : The Economist 9th October 1993
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