Big Game Parks will lead rhino trade talks

AT THE upcoming CITES meeting in Sri Lanka in May, the Legal Trade for Rhino Survival, a campaign led by the Kingdom of Swaziland’s Big Game Parks, hopes to “sensitise the world to the real plight of Africa’s rhinos and encourage effective action to ensure their long-time survival”.

“It’s believed that an ethical, legal international trade in rhino horn will not only give rhinos their best chance of survival but will also unlock enormous muchneeded funding for other important nature conservation needs, and at the same time bring meaningful benefits to rural communities and economies of African range states.”

The country is home to about 79 southern white rhino. It wants to allow limited and regulated trade in its legal stockpiles of around 330kg horn and to non-lethally harvest about 20kg a year.

The horn, it says, will be properly documented, certificated and recorded on a DNA database, a national register and with the CITES Secretariat to safeguard its integrity. At COP17, parties, including rhino range states, rejected a similar proposal from eswatini.

Analysis by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and wildlife trade specialists, Traffic, on eswatini’s proposed amendment to CITES, finds it has the potential to stimulate trade as the rhino subspecies is in demand.

“It is unlikely that 20kg per year will meet global demand. It’s not possible to predict if legalising trade in rhino horn from one population will stimulate trade in other populations.

“While legal trade could replace some of the demand currently being met by legally obtained horn, legalisation could also lead to new consumers entering the market who had previously been put off by its illegality.

Few details are provided as to how the proposed legal trade will be carried out. “For example, it’s not specified which importing countries would permit a legal trade (China recently reaffirmed its 25-year ban on the use of rhino horn for traditional Chinese medicine) or how trade would be monitored throughout the trade chain to avoid laundering and who would fund this.

“Eswatini has provided some detail on precautionary measures they would implement, but it’s not clear what safeguards would be implemented by any anticipated trade partners or even which countries would be able legally to import the horn.” | Sheree Bega