Investment that counts its yield in baby rhinos

● The planned sale of a rhino impact bond, aimed at growing the population of the endangered black rhino, is seen by its backers as a test for the creation of a conservation debt market that could be used for everything from protecting species facing extinction to preserving wildlife areas.

The sale next year of the $50m (R695m) bond, the first financial instrument for species conservation, is being run by the Zoological Society of London and Conservation Capital, a company founded in Kenya 15 years ago to create investment tools for conservation.

Under the programme, the five-year bond will cover conservation efforts at five sites in SA and Kenya where about 700 black rhinos, or about 12% of the world’s population of the animals, live. Investors will be paid back their capital and a yield if the number of animals increases. The target is to boost the world’s black rhino population by 10%.

The five sites covered by the bond are confidential, to avoid attracting poachers.

“We see this as a shift in the conservation-funding model,” said Oliver Withers, head of conservation finance and enterprise at the Zoological Society of London. “There is huge scope for this to be used for other species.”

The rhino security is a first, but so-called “impact bonds” have been used to finance a variety of outcomes from girls’ education in rural India to sustainable marine and fisheries projects in the Seychelles.

Black rhinos were chosen because they are “countable, critically endangered and charismatic”, said Glen Jeffries of Conservation Capital.

There are about 5,500 black rhinos in the wild in Africa, where they are an indigenous species and mostly live in just four countries, down from 65,000 in 1970.

That compares with about 20,000 of the larger white rhinos that mostly live in SA. Black rhinos weigh as much as 1.4t compared with the 2.5t white rhino.

In 2018, 769 mainly white rhinos were killed in SA.

Recipients of the funds will be able to use the money how they choose, provided it is for conservation.