Lalibela Game reserve wants to increase protection after losing four rhinos but conservation costs are crippling.
As if the poaching of four rhinos isn’t enough, Lalibela Game Reserve faces more than just this traumatic loss. The private reserve just outside Grahamstown is now staring down the barrel of a financial crisis as the strain of increasing protection on their remaining rhinos might just be too much to bear for the already burdened game reserve.
“We are not a corporation,” said the visibly upset owner of Lalibela, who asked not to be named. “We are just a normal family, any protection [of the Rhinos] we have to do ourselves, there aren’t millions that we have access to and we haven’t received any external funding.”
At the time of the poaching, protection measures were running at Lalibela reserve’s limit of R50 000 month. This amount allows for only one vehicle to be in the field at all times.
Now Lalibela can look nowhere else but to the public for support to increase protection measures.
Funding crisis
“We do not have the means, but luckily people have offered financial support,” said the owner. Lalibela are looking to increase security measures from one to four patrolling vehicles, which will cost the reserve close to R2.2 million a year.
“There is not a huge amount that private game reserves can do anymore,” said conservation economist Michael Sas-Rolfes, “and the crisis needs to be seen through an economic lens if rhinos and the private reserves are to stand a chance”.
According to Sas-Rolfes the only way to put an end to the poaching is to increase the risks involved in engaging in this illegal activity. An increased level of risk will make rhino horn seem less profitable to the poacher. By making this personal cost higher than the expected income, the species may stand a chance.
In 2012 the South African government took several measures to halt the poaching epidemic. These included deploying soldiers along the Mozambican border, anti-poaching patrol training and increased spending for special investigative units like The Hawks. While over 200 poaching related arrests have been made this year, it is clear from last week’s incident that more still needs to be done.
Sas-Rolfes believes this kind of investment misses the point: “In illegal activities where organised crime has been established, enforcement efforts can never achieve anything better than temporary disruption,” he said. “This is because each specialist cell is quite easily replaceable.”
The onus then lies with the individual owners to offset the cost of stopping poachers getting to their rhinos, thus making the personal risk cost too high. When Zimbabwe faced a black rhino poaching crisis in the 1980s, a shoot to kill policy was implemented, allowing reserves to shoot poachers who came into the property. The risk cost was life, just high enough to win the poaching battle.
But without a such a clear mandate from government, and with fairly obvious human rights and Constitutional ramifications, South Africa’s smaller reserves, like Lalibela, are paralyzed. These private reserves are locked in an economic war with poachers, a war they currently cannot hope to win.
One controversial alternative lies in the growing support of lifting the current embargo on rhino horn trade. In theory this would move the trade power from the hands of poachers into the hands of South African authorities.
“Given that rhino is a renewable source, that some rhinos are already de-horned as a protective measure, and that existing legal stockpiles are constantly replenished from natural mortality, there is good scope for legal custodians of rhinos to displace a significant level of existing illegal off-take through direct competition,” said Sas-Rolfes.
A controversial compromise
A single rhino horn can fetch up to R1.8 million on the black market, that’s at $65 000 a kilogram, a higher price than gold. If rhino reserves could access these funds, many of their conservations costs would be covered. And others still stand to make a sizeable profit: John Hume, the world’s largest rhino breeder, currently holds rhino horn stockpiles totaling of over 500kgs. Sold at today’s prices he stand to make well over R200 million.
Dr Joseph Okori, Head of the World Wildlife Fund’s African rhino program, told investigative television show Carte Blanche that lifting the trade ban was no way forward: “There are no current strong control mechanisms, either in South Africa or in the consumer states, to monitor any form of rhino horn trade.”
And de-horned rhinos aren’t necessarily safe from poachers: in March this year Hume had four females hacked to death for the remaining stubs of their horns.
The debate on legalising and regulating the rhino horn trade is at an impasse, all the while rhinos are poached daily – 417 in 2012 alone.
Fortunately, and surprisingly, the rhino population is not yet in decline. If poaching continues at its current rate, however, experts believe the animal species will disappear in our lifetime – the first major extinction since the conservation movement began.
At present, reserves like Lalibela resort to relying on donations and sponsorship in order to protect their rhinos. An open letter from Lalibela requesting financial assistance stated that four rhinos might seem like a trivial addition to the 2012 tally, but for those who have spent their life’s savings on a piece of land for a dream that may now not succeed, it becomes very significant indeed.
By Chelsea Maclachlan
The four de-horned and dead Lalibela rhinos killed outside Grahamstown on Tuesday the 25th September 2012. Poisoning is the suspected cause of death, as well as their violent de-horning.
The Intensive Report 