Golf was yesterday. Today, a new hobby has established itself among South Africa’s millionaires: breeding wild animals. The super-rich spend an annual salary on buffalo, rhino and lion.
The current President Cyril Ramaphosa was also criticized in 2012 when he bid 1.8 million euros for a buffalo cow and calf at an auction in the poverty-stricken country – although he narrowly missed the bid. An upcoming auction could overshadow all that.
Platinum Rhino is located in South Africa’s North West province, between Johannesburg and the Botswana border. The farm is about the size of 12,000 soccer fields.
16,000
white rhinos are left all over Africa.
But here no potatoes or cows are propagated – but rhinos. 200 new white rhinos are added every year. There are now over 2,000, more than in the Kruger National Park.
Auction to save the farm meets with criticism
On April 26, the world’s largest rhino breeding project is set to find a new owner at an online auction. Starting price: $10 million.
However, the big game farm is controversial because the owners are accused of profiteering at the expense of an animal whose population has been reduced to a fraction of its former size by poachers in the last decade.
Across Africa, only 16,000 white rhinos roam the savannah; Things are even worse for their relatives, the black rhino.
John Hume wants to save her. The 81-year-old South African has reportedly made his fortune in the hospitality industry and has always had a soft spot for rhinos. He started breeding rhinos 14 years ago. In the meantime, a small wildlife park has grown out of it.
Horn popular on the Asian black market
The bidders not only put their money on a herd of rhinos and the land, but also on workshops, a gas station, helipads, a breeding station for orphaned rhino babies, 50 houses for employees, gazelles and other animals.
And last but not least, high security precautions including a control room manned around the clock. This is needed to keep poachers away. Because the horns are a coveted commodity on the Asian black market: the crushed horn is said to cure a hangover.
In addition, increase potency and cure cancer, says the vernacular. As a result, rhino horn was worth more than gold or cocaine at 57,000 euros per kilo. International trade remains strictly prohibited.
The auction serves to protect species
The operators of breeding are concerned with species protection. “Traditionally, this has been financed by donations and tourism revenue, but these sources are not sufficient to fully conserve wildlife and their habitat,” says Tammy Hume.
10
million dollars are the starting price for the auction of rhino breeding.
Her father-in-law also had to realize this: In view of the lack of a sustainable financing model, he had put his private assets into the breeding project.
However, environmentalists accuse Hume of other motives. Like most rhinos on reserves, his animals have historically been regularly dehorned – a painless and widely used method to protect them from poachers. At the same time, Hume is one of the most vocal advocates of legalizing trade.
In 2017 he managed to lift the ban for a few days, at least in South Africa. Conservationists raged. Now Tammy Hume appeases, “It was never about hoarding the horn for profit. It was about saving rhinos from extinction while looking for ways to make it (financially) sustainable.”
60
percent of South Africa’s rhinos are privately owned.
The breeding project, which is now going under the hammer, is home to about 13 percent of the world’s surviving white rhinos. “Remarkable”, even the WWF thinks. But the environmental organization sees another problem: “Increasingly, this is not a lack of rhinos, but a lack of protected areas with a safe, suitable habitat for free-living populations.”
Today, about 60 percent of South Africa’s rhinos are in private hands. According to the study, they spend three times as much on their protection as the responsible government agencies; they invest in thermal imaging, dog units and helicopters.
This is also reflected in the statistics: last year, poachers killed 350 rhinos in South Africa’s national and regional parks, only 86 privately owned.
The legalization of the horn trade is controversial
South African ecologist Hayley Clements also prefers conservation in the wild. “But when a species is endangered in its natural ecosystem, like rhinos are, we need to look for additional options to save them from extinction. Ranches like John Hume’s are a possibility.”
As far as the horn trade is concerned, according to the researcher, both opponents and supporters have “reasonable arguments”. The trade in live rhinos helped save the animals from disappearing 50 years ago. Some are hoping for a similar effect should their horns one day – legally – flood the market.
Vu Hoai Nam Dang and his colleagues at the University of Copenhagen are also researching the topic. They recently surveyed several hundred horn consumers in Vietnam about their preferences.
The “worrying” finding: Consumers also preferred horn from the wild because, according to superstition, it works better than that from farmed animals. Even if the trade is legalized, there could be a parallel black market in the future.
