“Our client has accordingly not yet been paid for the said [rhino] horns and the horns therefore remain his lawful and rightful property.”
Now here’s a weird one. What to do with 1,700 white rhinos?
Little more than a week after World Rhino Day, John Hume, the South African farmer and owner of the world’s largest private collection of living rhinos, put his Mpumalanga nature reserve up for auction in one last, final, likely futile bid to keep his herd — some 1,700 rhinos in all — in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
The auction was a flop. The die is cast. The would-be entrepreneur and self-described conservationist — conservation groups would call him by any other name — dreamed up a get-rich-quick scheme for the ages. Sadly, it turned out to be more likely a scheme out of a Carl Hiaasen novel: wacky, ill-thought through and not entirely on the level.
Hume’s idea was to farm rhinos — instead of, say, cattle — breed them and then sell the rhinos’ horns on the open market for bucketloads of money.
Instead, Hume has been left with bucketloads of something else, and no way to pay for it all.
Hume gambled that the sale of rhino horn would eventually be made legal and the worldwide ban lifted — God damn you, CITES; God damn you, IUCN. South Africa was one of the loudest voices to get the worldwide ban on ivory lifted, for a one-off-sale of stockpiled elephant tusks, but CITES, IUCN and other UN and NGO weanies voted that down, a mere fortnight ago. Rhino horn is even more precious, because as everyone in China, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand knows, ground powder made from rhino horn cures cancer and improves one’s sex drive. But wait, there’s more. Dagger handles made from rhino horn are hot stuff on the Arabian peninsular; if only the desert sheiks in Yemen had been allowed to burnish their daggers with handles made of ivory horn, that little business with Saudi Arabia might never have happened. But the bureaucrats got in the way, backed by lefties, liberals, Commies, pinkos, weak-
kneed sob-sisters and social workers from Western countries, and 16-year-old climate activists from Sweden, and well, the whole scheme fell apart and went to hell.
Now what to do?
Well, not that. Earlier this year, Hume confirmed he legally sold 181 rhino horns to a Port Elizabeth, SA buyer said to be linked to one of the largest reported seizures of illegal rhino horn in South African history.
Much is at stake, if you will.
There is an argument to be made that, with the world’s rhino population heading headlong into a crash — the rhino may well prove to be one of the first casualties of an iconic “Big Five” animal species during our lifetimes, as the long-predicted 6th Mass Extinction looks more and more like a growing reality — private herds may be one way to save them. Private herds are better protected than those in national parks, no small consideration given the present poaching onslaught. As the Northern white rhino is now all but extinct, South Africa is now home to the world’s largest surviving population of remaining African white rhinos, and half of those are in private hands. Hume’s herd represents some 7% of the total.
That might not sound like much, but if the rhinos should perish because no one has the funds to feed them, that would be an unspeakable tragedy. All the more so because it’s so preventable.
If ever there was time for one of those tech titans with more money than they know what to do with to step in, this is it.
