Should South African game auctions exclude trophy hunt operators from acquiring rhinos?
As increasing evidence suggests that some of South Africa’s legal trophy hunts are linked to illegal rhino horn trade, perhaps it is time take a closer look at game auctions that provide rhinos to professional hunters and trophy hunt operators.
The current controversy surrounding Shamwari Game Reserve’s apparent willingness to sell rhinos to professional hunters at its upcoming wildlife auction has prompted a closer look at the role that game auctions could be playing in the illegal rhino horn trade.
Background: Trophy hunt operators and their Vietnamese “clients”
Now that Vietnam and China have been identified as the main destinations for illegal rhino horn, the unusual rise of Vietnamese trophy hunting “clients” has attracted the attention of South African authorities.
A recent report prepared by the IUCN/SSC and TRAFFIC for CITES found a disturbing increase in Vietnamese trophy hunting “clients” who appear to be exploiting hunting loopholes to acquire rhino horn.
Sizeable trade in trophies from sport hunted rhinos has also occurred from South Africa, with reported exports totaling 470 trophies and 121 horns from 2006 to 2008. Assuming ”horns” refer to single horns and ”trophies” comprise both back and front horns, this trade represents 1,061 horns or some 531 rhinos. It is of grave concern that not all hunting trophies remain non-commercial ”personal effects”, a phenomenon that has coincided with the advent of Vietnamese nationals as sport hunting clients.
Discrepancies in the number of “trophies” and lack of CITES documentation were also noted in rhino horns exported to Vietnam from South Africa.
In 2003, for the first time, South Africa issued CITES permits for nine rhino trophies and two rhino horns to be exported to Viet Nam. A year later, three more trophies were reportedly exported. From that modest beginning, trade in rhino horns to Viet Nam rapidly grew to entail some 286 rhino horns from 2006 through 2009 …
Whilst this number appears high, Vietnamese nationals reportedly conducted 203 white rhino hunts in South Africa in 2005- 2007, which would have yielded 406 rhino horns; South African exports, however, only account for 268 horns to Viet Nam during this same period, suggesting that one-third of these hunts took place without the subsequent acquisition of CITES documents.
The same report further suggested cooperation between game ranches, trophy hunt operators, and Vietnamese trophy hunting “clients”.
Investigations in South Africa have revealed disturbing evidence of organized crime, including:
the frequent involvement of a small number of Vietnamese nationals in rhino hunting, often on the same game ranches repeatedly;
numerous cases whereby Vietnamese ”trophy hunters” paid above market price for rhino hunts, but then had to be instructed how to shoot and would completely forego any proper trophy preparation …
Also noteworthy is that in 2007, permits for six rhino trophies were issued by South Africa to China (“another country not traditionally active in trophy hunting”); however, China did not report receiving these trophies.
Busted: Sandhurst Safaris
Earlier this month, Sandhurst Safaris was implicated in a major rhino poaching and horn smuggling operation, in which millions in property and assets were seized.
These include the residential properties of the accused and all other properties in which they have an interest, such as George Fletcher’s seven farms, situated at Sandhurst Safaris in Tosca in the North West province. The seven farms are registered in a trust, named “Fletcher Trust”, of which George Fletcher is a trustee.
According to several sources, including News 24, the group used a small aircraft to locate rhinos in South African national parks and transport poachers to the parks, where the rhinos were shot and killed. The rhino horns were then taken via aircraft to Sandhurst Safaris – which also served as a money laundering point for the operation.
… the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) confiscated an Aerostar small aeroplane allegedly used to transport the poachers to the game reserves, to spot the rhinos and transport their horns to Sandhurst Safaris, in Tosca, in the North West.
The Sandhurst Safaris website boasts a “phenomenal” variety of species – including rhino – available to hunting clients.
Although there are currently no official reports that horns from rhinos killed by Sandhurst Safaris clients entered the illegal market, Sandhurst’s involvement certainly warrants a closer look at the trophy hunting industry overall.
From Dwesa Nature Reserve to Vietnam – via African Scent Safaris
In 2009, Dwesa Nature Reserve auctioned off the right to kill six rhinos to the highest bidder – which happened to be African Scent Safaris. Afterward, it was confirmed that Vietnamese clients of African Scent Safaris killed two rhinos and had the horns exported to Vietnam.
The horns of the two rhinos shot at Dwesa this month have been exported to Vietnam to the hunters who shot them, the outfitter involved in the controversial hunt said yesterday.
Speaking from his base in Bloemfontein, Willem Botha, of African Scent Safaris, said his two Vietnamese clients could now do “anything” with the horns.
Botha did admit that he “had never before had clients from Vietnam” and further claimed he was unaware of a charge pending against one of his clients.
It’s time to put game auctions under the microscope
Consider the current rhino poaching epidemic – and realize that traditional “business as usual” relationships can no longer exist between game auctions and trophy hunters.
If games auctions continue to sell rhinos to professional hunters, then perhaps it is time to put such auctions under the microscope – and insist they share accountability in the event a “highest bidder” is implicated in any illegal rhino horn activity.
(Better yet: Prohibit professional hunters from purchasing rhinos at game auctions. And while we’re at it – let’s do away with the barbaric sport of trophy hunting altogether.)
Image: istock.com
Source: African and Asian Rhinoceroses – Status, Conservation and Trade, 20 November 2009. Download the report from CITES.
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“Better yet: Prohibit professional hunters from purchasing rhinos at game auctions. And while we’re at it – let’s do away with the barbaric sport of trophy hunting altogether.”
Please leave your personal opinions on hunting in general out of the article. I personally do not hunt, as I have a grocery down the street. But making statements like that seperate attention from your article and may cause resentment or someone who was agreeing with your article to change their mind in a negative way. There are plenty of people who hunt or support hunters who feel the same way as you do about Rhino’s and other endangered species. Alienating them will only push people away from a subject that needs as many supporters as possible at this time. Thank you.
This is a blog, it’s meant for personal opinion Jason.
I agree 100% that trophy hunting (and all hunting) should be banished. If someone resents someone else because they don’t support the murder of innocent animals, then they don’t truly have the passion that is required to take on these mindless killers (the ‘hunters’) and their sick and twisted businesses.
ok, here we go again.
A perfectly good report taken out of context and emotion getting in the way of logical thought and wildlife management.
3 times as much land in SA is under private wildlife management than by government, people do this to make money, but it is also to a large degree these same people who give SA the abundance of wildlife that it has.
Unfortunately, even though endangered, there is a surplus of both black & white Rhino males in South Africa due to their breeding & territorial habits, the fact that they cannot just be relocated to anywhere etc, so they question is, what do we do with the surplus animals?
Personally, I believe that the people buying the rhino at auction for hunting farms where they have clients paying for the hunt are probably lessening the onslaught against the rhino in the reserves. over 80 so far this year, add the “hunted” ones in.
What we should be doing, and we are not, is making sure that the loopholes are closed, making sure that the rules are enforced, making sure that the poachers in the reserves get huge fines & prison sentences that affect the whole family ( along the lines of ” the sins of the father will be visited upon the son”), and then encourage the hunting farms to buy the excess rhino, but creat a conservation tax on the sale & the hunt to generate funds for the protection of the rhinos in the reserves.
One wonders how horns from legal rhinos have been exported without CITES export permits? Smuggling of course.
This is really unfortunate as good outfitters in SA are being tarnished by the unethical fraudsters. Furthermore the issue of poaching and illegal trade becomes conflated with hunting in general.
Hunting was a major vehicle for White Rhino conservation and the hunting based incentives are the reason SA white rhino were downlisted. Think of the ability to hunt a species as a indicator or benchmark of its conservation status, not the other way around.
Hunting is no more barbaric that eating, the death is simply a few degrees of separation closer. Even a vegetarian diet requires the death of animals in order to grow food and mortality is simply implict in living.
I am am not that myopic to argue that its the only way to conserve game but its has a very important role to play not only in the ‘logic’ of conservation but in fact in the well being and psychology of modern, largely urbanized people who suffer increasing from nature-deficit disorder. I urge you to read the work of Randall Eaton and Ted Kerasote, amongst many others, who make sound philoshopical and biological arguments for hunting AND other forms of nature interaction.
If hunting were banned and the hunting imperative removed, what alternative would be presented? Not that I believe its the only way. In some places its unsuitable, in others its the best method of conservation, blanket approaches are unsophisticated. Of course there are examples of poor hunting practice just as poor examples of ‘eco-tourism’ practice also abound. Its weak to vilify one and not the other in terms of large scale impacts and long term effects.
Thank you, everyone, for the comments!
Obviously, my personal opinion is that I am opposed to trophy hunting, and yes, now and then, I am going to express it here. By this time, I am used to “agreeing to disagree” with folks over that issue.
More important than my personal opinion, however, is that I want to reiterate that the only reason trophy hunting is on our radar is because of the growing number of cases involving unscrupulous trophy hunt operators who have been found to be cooperating with rhino poaching syndicates.
In the current environment, any possible link in the illegal trade chain needs to be considered. Game auctions can be the first link in that chain. If rhinos are auctioned to professional hunters, then it is fair to ask for transparency and/or follow-up regarding auctions, in the event one of these buyers is later found to be on the wrong side of the law.
I hope we can all agree that any possible connections that can help authorities – from local police to INTERPOL – crack down on the rhino poaching epidemic, should be brought out into the open.
Thanks again!
Rhishja Larson
People or getting confused between professional hunters and poachers. Conservation startes with the hunters,because they are the only ones prepared to pay the price for the animal ,giving the farmer reason to farm with game.(If we all stopped eating beef ,how many farmers would farm with cows?!!!!!!!
I bet you people like Rebbeca are at home all snuggled up on their leather sofa , eating a steak and wearing sheep skin slippers.
You do not find vegetarian going around SAVE THE PIG, SAVE THE COW OR SAVE THE CHICKEN. WHAT MAKES GAME ANIMALS ANY DIFFERENT.
The way animals get slaughtered is 100% worse than hunting. Some people are very narrow minded and base their opinion an thier emotions. I really feel before people makes such out rages remakes first gain some knowledge about the topic.