MY favourite Big Five animal has always been the rhino. I don’t know why, as it’s the ugliest and reminds me of a punch-drunk pugilist; belligerent, brain-damaged, broken-nosed but with infinite courage.
I got the prize-fighter analogy when I was with an ex-girlfriend many years ago in the Hluhluwe Game Reserve and a massive, magnificent white rhino came out of the sticks at us.
We were in my Volksie, which was so dinged that it already looked as if it had been hit by a rhino, so I put foot and sped off.
In my rear-view mirror I could see the rhino toss its head like an uppercut. If it had caught us, my Volksie would have been perched on top of some acacia tree. The rhino won that round.
No longer. Today, the rhino is not only on the ropes, but the KO count is on nine. One more and it’s out for good. It will be extinct. My grandchildren will never have the thrill of being chased by one, let alone see one.
I got even more interested in rhino while doing a book chronicling my brother-in-law Lawrence Anthony’s valiant attempt to save the Northern White Rhino.
Lawrence risked his life in an insanely brave gamble by going deep into the jungle of South Sudan to meet fighters of The Lord’s Resistance Army, whose leader Joseph Kony is still one of the world’s most wanted men.
Lawrence planned to persuade the LRA to stop poaching rhino, but tragically died during negotiations. If anyone could have pulled it off, it would have been him.
The Northern White is now extinct in the wild. Lawrence and I spoke about this at length. He feared that conservation in the future would be little more than strategic fortresses with endangered species being defended by military-trained contractors bristling with machine guns.
He was already starting to initiate that on his reserve with two baby rhinos being guarded around the clock.
As usual, Lawrence was ahead of his time. He painted this vivid image for me: ounce for ounce, a rhino horn is worth more than gold, so when you look at one visualise a half-metre scimitar of solid gold stuck on its snout.
Then take it one step further: we put gold in bomb-proof vaults, while our rhinos are protected by civilians armed with bolt-action rifles against AK-47s and helicopters.
Militarised enclaves
Lawrence’s nightmare of reserves becoming militarised enclaves has not materialised yet due to the enormous costs of running a private army. But in the few years since he left us, rhino poaching has almost doubled.
However, nature as always has an answer. Why not let the rhino pay its own way?
The rhino is being hunted to a standstill for a single item; it’s horn which many Vietnamese believe can cure cancer.
But a horn is mainly keratin, the same substance as your fingernails. So if you cut it off, it will regrow. In other words, it is a sustainable commodity. To kill it is not only a crime against the planet but economically crazy.
The issue is not whether rhino horn has medicinal powers (it doesn’t). It’s the belief that it does. Most Vietnamese smoke like chimneys so lung cancer has gone through the roof. The hospitals cannot cope, so people predictably turn to quack cures.
At the moment, private rhino owners and the government have between them about 25 tons of stockpiled horn, worth well over $1-billion.
If that was sold legally, it could possibly bring down demand in the Far East, save many surviving rhinos – and cater for skyrocketing demand on a sustainable basis.
There is no easy solution and the thought of a rhino becoming a commercial commodity sticks in my craw. But the reality is that bans always fail – look at Prohibition in the 1920s or the war on drugs today.
The truth is that whatever we are currently doing is not working. We have to think outside the box. And if harvesting and trading in sustainable horn helps protect this ugly-beautiful beast, at the very least let’s consider it.
Then hopefully my grandkids can also get chased by one.
