KZN Wildlife Pushing for Legalisation of the Trade in Rhino Horn

While this issue does not pertain to St Lucia, we, at St Lucia News, imagine all residents within our community are closely following the countrywide plight of our beautiful rhinos. Gleaned from a variety of news publications throughout this week, St Lucia News can provide its readers with some updates on the subject.

During the conference at Thula Thula Private Game Reserve last Thursday (mentioned in our article regarding the beach driving ban), the much publicised issue of rhino poaching was also discussed.

KZN Wildlife CEO, Dr Bandile Mkhize, announced that the conservation authority is pushing for the legalisation of trade in rhino horn. He went on to say that KZN Wildlife is preparing a submission for CITES which is due in September. “The solution (to the rhino-poaching problem) is to legalise the trade in rhino horn. We have to lobby. We have to convince government at national level. We are going to run with this.”

Dr Mkhize also spoke of the high-end equipment, including night vision equipment and helicopters, not to mention the money, available to poaching syndicates. One kilogram of rhino horn is worth R650 000 and the average horn weighs five or six kilograms. From this, a person can easily deduct the value per horn, producing the vast amounts of money being fed constinuously into this illegal cycle.

The province has the support of renowned conservationist Ian Player who was instrumental in saving the rhino when it was near extinction in the 1960s.

Dr Mkhize went on to say that there are five levels within poaching syndicates. Law enforcement agencies often arrest criminals on the bottom three levels; the poachers, transporters and sellers, but the criminals within levels four and five – big businesses funding these operations – often go unapprehended as they are much more difficult to “crack”. What they do know, Dr Mkhize concluded, is that, no matter which game reserves in the country suffer rhino poaching, all horns end up in Gauteng. And from there they “disappear”.

Dr Mkhize's views on this controversial matter were not unanimous, with members of the audience challenging his statement that flooding the market with rhino horn would put an end to poaching and the illegal trade of rhino horn. Rhino horn is not an unlimited quantity so perhaps flooding the market with it would only expedite the species' demise.

Rhinos are currently listed on Appendix 11 at CITES, an appendix that protects species not considered threatened with extinction but that may become so unless trade is closely controlled.

In the past 10 days alone Zululand rhino numbers have decreased by at least six. The Richards Bay Organised Crime Combating Unit are investigating after two white rhinos were found dead and dehorned near Mpila in HluhluweImfolozi Game Reserve ten days ago. Last Sunday, at Chick’s Game Lodge near Hluhluwe, a mother and calf were shot and their horns removed. Two male rhinos were found dead at Ndumo Reserve last Thursday, apparently as a result of fighting, however, the horns had been removed from the carcasses. (Poaching statistics and CITES information obtained from Zululand Observer article this week). Meanwhile, the Vryheid Herald will, in next week's issue, run an article on the only two adult rhinos at Mpofini Lodge just outside Vryheid which were brutally butchered in recent days. 

When will the killing end?