The OSCAP 2014 Debate: No To Legal Rhino Horn Trade
There we were at the Onderstepoort Lapa in Pretoria north sitting among environmental investigators, lawyers, journalists and professors discussing the risks of South Africa’s plans to legalize rhino horn trade, a very intense milieu.
By: Letlhogonolo Ndhlovu
Although this was meant to be an international debate between those who are pro- trade and those against, the room was only made up of anti trade wildlife conservers who presented their arguments accordingly.
The entire system is ineffective and corrupt
The lessons learnt from legalizing ivory trade presented by Mary Rice from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) clearly point out that permitting rhino horn trade is extremely naive. During the 1970s and 80’s elephants were being killed because of huge demand for its ivory. In 1989 CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) banned international trade in ivory, Africa’s elephants recovered and the countries that had stock piled ivory had a legal once off sale. In 2007 the decision to legalize ivory trade was agreed upon and research indicates that;
- CITES legal sale of ivory did not reduce poaching.
- CITES legal sale did not reduce demand for ivory in countries like China.
- Laundering of illegal ivory has increased.
“If we legalize rhino horn trade, we’ll be repeating a huge mistake, as we did with elephants,” said Will Travers from the Born Free foundation.
Eighty three percent of Africa’s rhinos are in South Africa, it is already difficult to protect these species from near extinction. Benson Okita from Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) pointed out factors South Africa disregarded in their proposal to CITES for legal trade in 2016, which are:
- The re-awakening of old markets.
- The inability to supply the old and new markets.
- Escalation of poaching to supply demand.
- Rhino population decline.
- Rhino horn has no medicinal properties, drug producers can dilute it at will, making the price formation normally dictated by the law of supply and demand unpredictable.
Kenyan NGO WildlifeDirect, based in Nairobi conducted a study on the prosecution of wildlife related crimes in Kenyan courts and found that 70% of poaching crime files were misplaced, “the entire system is ineffective and corrupt,” affirmed the CEO of WildlifeDirect, Dr Paula Kahumbu.
Will legal trade further damage fragile African governments? How will tourism be affected if we are only left with the big 4? Who benefits from rhino trade in the end?
Will Travers asked a crowd in London gathered for a similar rhino horn trade discussion if the rhino horn actually works, “nobody believed it worked,” said Travers. Allowing society to buy into something that does not work is “morally bankrupt,” he added.
Go to www.oscap.co.za for more details about the debate.
Here is a gallery of the OSCAP Debate:
(click to enlarge)
Read the article International Debate: Assessing The Risk Of Rhino Horn Trade for a brief background.