Rhino man can’t afford millions to save herd
Drought and ban on horn sales blamed for his plight
● Wanted: a billionaire investor to save more than 1,600 white rhinos from starvation.
That’s what controversial South African rhino breeder and former millionaire John Hume, 77, is on the hunt for in a desperate bid to keep alive his herd, which makes up about 10% of the world’s 17,480 white rhinos.
The fate of the rhinos at his 8,000ha Buffalo Dream ranch in the North West hangs in the balance. Hume can no longer afford to pay the R5m a month that it costs to feed them and protect them from poachers.
Now he is targeting members of the Forbes Rich List in an effort to interest a buyer for the animals.
In 2017, Hume won a Constitutional Court challenge to the government’s ban on the sale of rhino horn. He had long argued for the sales to be regulated because rhinos were a “renewable resource”.
Rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine, but increasingly common is its use as a status symbol to display success and wealth.
Late environmental minister Edna Molewa noted in a statement at the time that “the domestic sale of rhino horn is legal following a Constitutional Court order in April 2017 upholding a 2015 high court decision to lift the 2009 moratorium on the domestic trade in rhino horn retrospectively”.
But she said the “domestic trade in rhino horn is subject to the issuance of the relevant permits in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, 2004 … its regulations and applicable provincial legislation”.
According to the statement, only the environmental minister had the authority to grant permits for the sale of rhino horn in the seven provinces where MECs responsible for environmental affairs had agreed that the minister “should be the issuing authority for permits relating to trade in rhino horn”.
Hume told the Sunday Times this week that although the Constitutional Court had restored regulated domestic trade in rhino horn in SA, the government still blocked local sales.
“Obviously after that I thought I would be selling rhino horn, but the government has made it virtually impossible in SA.”
Two more factors have counted against Hume and his rhino herd. There is a global ban in place on the sale of rhino horn and a drought in North West. The drought has devastated the natural grass in the area.
Hume said he had spent $150m on his ranch over the years, but had now reached day zero in his finances.
Hume rues the day, about 26 years ago, when he became passionate about preserving SA’s white rhino.
He has installed a R50m security system to help keep out the poachers.
“It has become completely impossible for the project to be self-sufficient, without selling rhino horn, or selling live rhinos to overseas buyers,” said Hume.
“During the same time, the world and my government have made it virtually impossible to sell rhino horn. They should have long ago recognised that the rhino is capable of looking after itself.”
The recent sale of 17 black rhino to Swaziland for about R500,000 has helped sustain the other animals. But Hume is not sure for how long.
He is afraid of auctioning his herd because he fears they may be killed and their horns sold on the black market.
But international NGO Save the Rhino believes Hume’s short-sighted business approach is to blame for the situation.
Save the Rhino said in a statement on its website that Hume’s business model “has always been premised on a legalised trade in rhino horn, without — seemingly — a contingency plan for what might happen to these rhinos if the trade ban continued. The lack of a back-up plan has, unfortunately, brought us to today’s situation.”
A recent independent assessment by the African Rhino Specialist Group — a scientific body for rhino conservation — found that Hume’s rhino population “constitutes a viable and valuable contingency operation for the protection and production of white rhino at a time of major poaching threats where several populations, including Kruger National Park, have declined”.