Legalising the sale of rhino horn will have catastrophic consequences for free-ranging rhino in the wild, especially for those north of South Africa’s borders, leading African conservationist, Colin Bell, has warned.

Bell was responding to calls to legalise the sale of rhino horn through a strictly controlled process by a central selling organisation.

SA Tourism Update last week quoted a report in The Star that CEO of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, Dr Bandile Mkhize, had proposed the creation of a global central selling organisation of rhino horn.

“We have to try something different, and trading rhino horn is a mechanism I am now prepared to support and argue forcefully for,”Mkhize said.

The idea would be to sell more than the current level of illegally obtained horn at a price that limited demand to sustainable levels.

Bell said, while this might work for certain vested interests in South Africa, it was wishful thinking to believe that the relatively few remaining rhinos could ever meet the demand for horn from potentially billions of people.

He pointed out that many of the rhino populations outside South Africa, which are often found within unfenced national parks or on community land, could in all likelihood be targeted and even wiped out if the sale of horn was legalised. “When South Africans propose wildlife solutions, they need to not only think of what effect it will have on South Africa but also what effect the proposals will have north of our borders. There needs to be a shift from the South African micro view on solutions to rhino poaching to an all-African solution. We need to look past our boundaries and look at the problem from an African perspective. In my view, if we open up the legal trade of rhino horn, we do know that South African game ranchers will benefit but we do not know what the ramifications will be for rhino roaming the wilds further north.”

Bell said that while the South African authorities and stakeholders might have the best intentions to strictly control sales, the way CITES certificates and hunting permits had been abused in the past meant that further openings would be created for organised criminal syndicates to exploit the situation.

Pointing to his own experience in Botswana, he said in the 80s, prior to the authorities clamping down on loopholes, sometimes up to 20 additional buffalo were illegally hunted on one legal hunting permit for one animal.  The same scale of abuse could already be happening overseas with the CITES rhino permits already issued.

He believed that, despite government’s best efforts, bogus rhino hunting in South Africa was widespread. He sent Tourism Update a copy of the latest issue of the KZN-based magazine, Wildside, which published a list of permits issued in one district.

Over 90% of the permits were granted to Asian hunters, mainly from Vietnam, many of whom were reported to be clueless about hunting but were apparently after the CITES certificates needed to export rhino horn – and to potentially launder and legalise many other illegally obtained rhino horns. In North West province alone, over 90% of the 194 legally sanctioned hunts since 2009 have been to ‘hunters’ from the East.

“The only way forward is (a) all rhino hunting is stopped immediately so that no more new CITES permits can be issued to further flood the market overseas; (b) that the fines for the illegal possession of rhino horn have to be dramatically increased along with the jail sentences; (c) for anti-poaching efforts to be radically stepped up. The days of anti-poaching being an eight-to-four job are over if we wish to address the poaching scourge. And finally (d), if we want to become serious about stopping rhino poaching, we need to track down every one of the CITES permits issued to Vietnamese and find out what has happened to those horns.  That journey will take us directly to the people who are fuelling the demand for rhino horn in the Orient.”

Well-motivated and resourced anti-poaching squads were effective, Bell said, citing the examples where well-policed and protected reserves had succeeded in repelling potential poachers.

Bell co-founded Wilderness Safaris in 1983 and was the CEO until 2005 when it operated almost 55 lodges in seven African countries and won the Conservation International and National Geographic Traveler’s first World Legacy Award for responsible tourism.

“Africa has already lost the Northern White rhino from the wilds in the past decade. If we open up the legal trade of rhino horn, it may be good for the South African game ranchers but we do not know what the ramifications will be for rhino throughout the rest of Africa. It is just too much of a risk,” said Bell.

Click here to see the official hunting permit list. More than 90% of these permits were issued to people from China, Thailand or Vietnam, countries which have little history in trophy-related hunting.