I’ve been keeping an eye on the trials and tribulations of the world largest rhino breeder, John Hume, for the past few weeks and wondering if his case will finally spark a long overdue conversation on the future of conservation.
Wildlife breeder Hume has amassed a population of about 2,000 white rhinos on his farm in North West. He has for 30 years been a controversial figure in the conservation community, singlehandedly conserving about 10% of the global rhino population while advocating the scrapping of the 1977 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ (Cites) ban on international trade in rhino horn.
Now he is 81. Protection costs for the animals are soaring, the market price for live animals has slumped and the Cites ban on trade of nonlethally harvested horn remains stubbornly immovable. Now Hume (like many private rhino breeders in the same boat) finally has to cash in his chips. But with a dearth of buyers for his farm it seems the cashier has closed up shop, leaving him with a biodiversity asset proving to be a financial liability.
This brings us to the uncomfortable conversation the nature-loving SA public has been resisting for a long time: the paradigm for how conservation business models should work is not working. We need to try something new.
South Africans seem to have a special blind spot when it comes to conservation as a business in which conservation outcomes should be arrived at no matter how unviable the business model. The popular narrative is that killing animals is bad, hunters and poachers are cut from the same cloth, and the only thing you should shoot an animal with is a camera.
This high-minded attitude really is divorced from reality. The disconnect of policymakers listening to uninformed moral indignation over informed, practical but unpopular industry expertise is playing out in full view of the public eye on Hume’s farm.
As a qualified, experienced former game ranger, who never shot an animal in his life, I understand why people are repulsed by wildlife business models such as the trade in horns or trophy hunting, but photographic-tourism-only business models are driving species to extinction.
It’s great that the 6.5-million visitors to Sanparks reserves before Covid-19 contributed about R2bn to tourism revenue a year, according to the Sanparks 2019/20 annual report, but that pales in comparison with the R4.5bn spent by about 8,000 trophy hunters during that time, according to Tourism Research in Economic Environs & Society at North-West University.
That is a R300 spend on an average Sanparks visit, versus almost R600,000 by a trophy hunter. Little wonder then that Wildlife Ranching SA calculates that 80% of wildlife populations are on private land and that private reserves occupy double the land area of national parks in SA.
National parks simply do not have the financial resources to protect their wildlife populations.. A similar fate lies ahead for private reserves if public policy on wildlife business models covered by processes such as last year’s regional African Elephant Summit, national government’s Lion Breeder Exit strategy, or the international ban on the trade in rhino horn, does not shift.
The world’s premier wildlife conservation organisation, WWF, states: “Trophy hunting — where it is based on a clear scientific understanding of species’ population dynamics and is properly managed — has been proved to be an effective conservation tool in some countries and for certain species, including threatened species. Trophy hunting can generate substantial economic benefits, community and political support, and have direct benefits for threatened species and biodiversity.”
Maybe it is time to trade the moral high road to extinction for the practical low road to survival.
• Maguire is carbon project manager at Climate Neutral Group SA. He writes in his personal capacity.
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