Cites: Same goals, clashing tactics
Some say trade will pay for conservation, others argue it will fuel poaching and trafficking
‘Athousand game rangers have died protecting rhino and elephant in Africa — six in Swaziland.” Ted Reilly slowed down after this statement, struggling to keep reading his speech as he cried.
Committee room 1 at the 17th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) was silent. “They weren’t paid enough and they died.”
Reilly has been raising rhino in the Swazi kingdom for five decades but death rates now exceed birth rates. At 78, he said the species might be wiped out while he is still alive. At Cites, he tabled a proposal to allow the small kingdom to sell off rhino horn. This would fund conservation.
He said: “Under the Cites ban [rhino horn trade has been banned for four decades], dead rhino are more valuable than live rhino.”
Rhino horn is now one of the most valuable commodities on Earth. A thousand were killed in neighbouring South Africa last year, and the year before.
Swaziland’s proposal was heavily defeated. As much as any other moment at Cites, it illustrated the completely different ways in which groups think species must be saved. Swaziland falls in line with most of its southern neighbours, which want to sell the species they are keeping alive so that they can afford conservation.
They point to the failure of bans on trade in rhino horn and elephant tusks. When a ban was imposed on rhino horn trade in 1977, there were 70 000 black rhino in the wild. There are now 5 000. Only 11 countries are left with rhino. Between 2007 and 2014, elephant numbers in Africa