Out in the cold, Swazi activists find secret support

TED Reilly and his family couldn’t get into the crammed conference room at Cites CoP17.

So, instead, the chief proponent of Swaziland’s controversial – and likely unsuccessful – bid to legalise its rhino horn trade sat on a small couch outside eating deli sandwiches, plotting his next move.

Alongside him sat his wife, Elizabeth, and his daughter Ann, both wearing black jackets proudly proclaiming “Swaziland”.

As representatives of South Africa’s impoverished, landlocked neighbour at the international wildlife trade conference in Sandton, they were here to show that protecting rhinos was a family affair.

There was no space for Reilly, the chief executive of Swaziland’s Big Game Parks, a non-profit, in the room where a South African committee of inquiry, and Environmental Minister Edna Molewa, outlined why South Africa had ultimately chosen not to pursue a proposal for a legal trade in rhino horn at CoP17.

“We were really expecting South Africa to present a proposal, but when it didn’t we de- cided to stick our necks out with our own last-minute proposal,” explained Reilly, a slightly dishevelled-looking 78-year-old, his eyes red and tired.

“For us, it was about taking a stand – no one in South Africa pushed us to do it. But we knew we didn’t have any hope in hell of getting our proposal through.”

Then, almost conspiratorially, Reilly whispered: “We’ve had a lot of people coming to us here at this meeting, telling us that they support what we’re doing but that they can’t come out publicly and say it because they don’t want to lose funding.”

His country’s last-minute proposal for a limited, regulated trade in its rhino horn seemed doomed from the start, and has been attacked by conservationists and wildlife advocates for being weak – the Cites Secretariat called for additional information – lacking a trading partner, and for seeking to profit from the rhino crisis.

Lifting the ban – which would earn the mountain kingdom $10m (R138m) from 330kg of horn – would “add legal value” to ivory and rhino horn and save rhinos from extinction, insisted Reilly.

“The loss to the legal market is simply a gain to the illegal market.”

He shrugged. “Money is indeed the root of all evil. But we cannot do without it. We cannot eat without it and we certainly cannot conserve without it. Nor can we protect rhinos without it.

“The loss to custodians of these valuable self-renewing resources is simply the gain of criminals.

“The only reason for this disparity is the ban in legal trade of ivory and rhino horn and the influence of around 170 Cites member states who don’t have rhinos on the 11 that do. The result is the demise of the elephant and the rhino.”

His wife, her grey hair in two pigtails, agreed.

“Africa’s white rhinos are in terrible trouble… The Cites situation is not healthy for rhinos.”

In Swaziland’s infor mation document for its proposal to Cites – a “pragmatic common sense approach” – to legalise trade, Reilly outlined how the country wanted to “keep options open” for a debate on trade in rhino horn.

Over the past 24 years, Swaziland has lost just three rhinos to poaching, which Reilly said was because it boasted the “strongest legislation in Africa”, had dedicated game rangers and a sup-