I’M often confronted, via my Facebook News Feed, with grotesque images of butchered animals and an expectation that I participate in the emotionally satisfying activity of clicking ‘like’ and thus demonstrating that I’m against animal cruelty and for conservation. I’ve never once seen something in my Facebook News Feed that promotes the sustainable use of wildlife. Yet this is more likely to contribute to the long term survive of species like the Rhinoceros. 
The last few years has seen a dramatic rise in the incidence of rhino poaching. Previously secure populations are now being targeted by aggressive poaching operations, backed by international crime syndicates. Part of the problem is that the legal trade has been banned following campaigning by the ignorant self-righteous.
The illegal trade is driven by the high price for rhino horn because a worldwide trade ban has made rhino horn artificially scarce.
As Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes explains:
“Establishing an appropriately structured legal trading regime for rhino horn may provide a more effective and lasting solution to the rhino poaching problem for three reasons:
First [a legal trade] would bring trade out into the open. Market prices would be visible, thereby allowing for continued and accurate monitoring of ongoing consumer demand relative to supply. This would enable governments, conservationists and rhino owners to be far more immediately responsive to changing market conditions. It would also enable them to identify and engage directly with consumers.
Second, by providing a significantly increased and potentially ongoing source of supply, the incentives for speculative stockpiling by criminals would be greatly reduced, if not altogether removed. Furthermore, by meeting the demand at the highly inelastic and persistent ‘top end’ of the market, the price of horn would almost certainly drop, perhaps quite drastically, thereby reducing the profitability of the illegal market and concomitant incentives for poaching and illegal trade.
Third, by becoming active market participants, legal suppliers of rhino horn gain a new source of income, which they are able to re-invest in improved protection and breeding. Legal owners and custodians also have a significant competitive advantage over poachers and illegal suppliers: defendable legal rights and, in most cases, privileged physical access to and control of their stocks. If necessary, they can even dehorn their animals.”
You can read more, including why and how the re-education of people who desire rhino horn production hasn’t worked here…
http://www.rhino-economics.com/
An understanding of appropriate mechanisms for the sustainable use of not only rhino, but also elephants and crocodiles, seems to be generally in retreat. The world seems to be spinning away from practical wildlife conservation. Is it inevitable that social media will contribute to a rise in the banning of activities that could contribute to long-term sustainable management and conservation of wildlife, while inadvertently assisting the development of poaching and illegal trade?
***
Further reading …
1. ‘The Rhino Poaching Crisis: A Market Analysis’ by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes can be downloaded at
http://www.rhino-economics.com/
2. For publications on sustainable use, but with an Australian focus visit
http://www.wmi.com.au/wmi-abst.html
The picture is from http://www.rhino-economics.com/the-illegal-rhino-horn-trade-is-driven-by-greed-and-evil-people/ . And republished here with Michael’s permission. Thank you.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The attitude that animals are SACRED and should not be bred and utilized always amazes me. What adds to that amazement is that the same people ENCOURAGE the slaughter of human fetuses. Why would one be worth protecting and not the other?? What makes one sacred and not the other??
You are definitely stepping on their toes suggesting that commercial use of animals can actually be GOOD for the species in that those practicing the husbandry have positive reinforcements to protect and raise healthy animals and to keep the supply stable!!
Cattle, chickens, basically all livestock regularly used by humans are in good supply and no where near in need of protection whereas animals in the wild often go through boom and bust cycles where they grow to fill their niche and, with any diminution of food supply, die off. Part of the histrionics with fish supplies is just this. Overfishing is a contributor, BUT, we see with how large the changes in different fish numbers can be that there is a natural effect that is causing the population changes.
Can’t the horns be removed when the animals are still alive and replaced with some equivalent?
Can’t the horns be removed when the animals are still alive and replaced with some equivalent?
Yes it can with no ill effects and is often done in order to protect the animals.
However, only a small portion of rhinos are accessible for this procedure, and it also stresses them to some extent as they have to be caught and tranquilized.
It is time consuming and costly.
Put a bounty on the poachers.
In fact LNP policy is pro this sort of thing. http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/04/kill-the-poor.html
Remind me why they want them, I can’t remember.
THAT is the only permanent solution. Kill the demand. Nobody wants anything, if the right publicity makes him feel like a dill for wanting it.
Just a thought
And KuhnKat, you are right . It is part of the cargo cult, supermarket thing.
Don’t get me started lol
Hi Ian
If you go into the article you will see how “killing the demand” has not worked, and you will also see how giving the animal a value can add conservation.
And third point I would like to make… they have been trying to kill AGW scepticism for a few years now… a real concerted effort in the West and they have just strengthened the subculture that you and I belong to.
Hi Ian
When I make reference to the article, I mean…
‘The Rhino Poaching Crisis: A Market Analysis’ by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes can be downloaded at
http://www.rhino-economics.com/
Cheers,
“subculture ” I KNEW IT ! and I thought the sceptics were the sensible ones…. It’s hard to keep up.
But really – killing megafauna in the belief that it can help your limp dick? really? Just line up all those who believe that and cull them. If this was organic food Jen would be telling me that’s it’s simply unnecessary and wasteful – so we need educational campaigns….. but now we create markets no matter how silly the need is?
Cut the horns off; the symbolism is exquisite.
Hi Jennifer,
Great blog post! I had never looked at this problem from the perspective of regulated Libertarianism–if you’ll pardon the oxymoron.
Larry the Wimp would like to point out that there is an alternative to real ivory. It’s known as tagua, or palm ivory. And it comes from some of the Latin American countries. Tagua starts out as a white liquid. Then when exposed to air for several days, it dries out to form a substance that looks and feels like ivory. You can carve it into knickknacks, or use it to make grips for revolvers.
Yes, there is a catch. If your tagua art object gets wet, you need to dry it off. Otherwise it may partially revert to its original state.
I’m sorry but (this is a first) I agree with Luke. It just doesn’t pass my common sense test. I put this up there with the idiots who kill tigers to service the market for tiger penis soup etc.
I thought we had gone beyond worrying about primitive beliefs and silly superstitions. I think we could allow very rich people some special publicity if they were to financially help to successfully breed ( and protect) some of the more endangered species on the planet.
I can see Branson going for it in a big way. He loves publicity.
Hi Jen , I see it all.And reducing the value is the only long term solution. ( As , controversially , with drugs of addiction .)
If there is no money to be made, things would change.
Every time the price of cigarettes is raised, it means more money can be made by a rogue kid selling individual smokes at school. Therefore more try it and more innocent kids think there must be something very special about these things.
Someone thinking of trying the secret horn potion probably thinks in the same way. with half of what happens down there being in the mind, the spending of all that money on a dangerous exciting potion could produce BIG results.
Well put cohenite.
I have a radical scenario in which rich Asians could be charged large amounts of money to go and shoot feral cats in Australia , in the way of African hunting safaris. They could even be supplied with a top chef as part of the deal.
The money raised might go toward replenishing the places cats have been living with little Aussies again.
Won’t happen of course, all the T gondii infected ladies would turn up at the hearings with puddy tat in a basket . lol
The Bolter puts the boot in over the co2 tax pricing. Could this cost the budget 7billion?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_worse_than_the_mining_tax_debacle/
Someone is going to have to hunt feral cats and dogs in my local forests. I’d like it to be professional or professionally supervised…just so long as it gets done. It’s not just the killing cats and dogs do, but the stress and (in the case of cats) methodical torture they inflict.
If someone wants to farm koalas or rhino for some reason, good luck to them. It’s likely to help preserve the species. But if we are going to have native forest then we need koalas in them. Mainly because they’re adorable but for plenty of other reasons.
We are trying to conserve while being squeamish about farming threatened species and protecting them in the wild with guns. I know that even bushies with long experience can go silly with guns. It’s professionals we need, people who don’t get excited. Where baiting is desirable, it needs to be made cheaper.
Then there is the concurrent need to protect livestock, especially sheep. Feral dogs don’t hunt just to eat, they hunt recreationally. They breed quicker than the dingo and are far less shy of humans. In parts of NSW they have bred to an extraordinary size and their behaviour doesn’t stay the same as more and more types and breeds contribute to the dangerous gene pool. Some sheep farmers in what should be ideal grazing regions are becoming full-time baiters, hunters and patrollers. They’re supposed to be farming!
It won’t be cheap, and “user-pays” and “market-forces” – which, amazingly, have become Big Lever fetishes of the left! – won’t do the job. Ditch all green fetishism, abolish any public body with the word “environment” in its title…and spend public money on real conservation. It will cost billions, but do it.
Has anyone thought that farming rhinos might be tad more complex than farming Bos taurus. Fencing? Fertility? Mustering? Handling?
And they are touchy beasts in managed situations – ask Western Plains zoo about losing four !
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/four-white-rhinos-die-at-dubbos-western-plains-zoo/story-fn7x8me2-1226306181090
Neville, Are you a vegetarian, what is the difference between harvesting rhino versus kangaroo? Of course there are also campaigns against the commercial “exploitation” of kangaroos.
Robert mentioned koala, Australian aborigines used to eat them. I have no problem with this. As long as the killing is humane and the harvest sustainable.
Johnathan, read the article and you will see that Michael is promoting the harvesting of horns, not rhino as such.
Luke, numbers of rhino recovered in southern Africa, especially white rhino, because they were successfully farmed. Your capacity to google is slipping?
While your googling Luke, see if you can find out how numbers of elephants and rhino have varied in national parks in South Africa over recent decades relative to international bans on ivory… dates and everything would be useful. Remember back in the late 1980s they had to cull elephants because numbers had increased so rapidly…
Jen I’m definitely a meat eater and have eaten roo meat many times, but not rhino. If rhinos become very common I certainly wouldn’t mind people eating them.
Certainly roos I’ve eaten are in plague numbers compared to 200+ years ago, so what does that matter?
But I still think it’s bizarre that people kill rhinos and elephants just to get the horn and tusks. To think that some people in the 21st century still think that they can perform better sexually because they digest scrappings of rhino horn or slurp tiger penis soup is just mind bogglingly stupid.
Lets not get the cart before the horse. If an animal is not endangered then we can discuss whether we should eat it or not,but not the other way round.
Neville,
But, elephants at least, have become locally so abundant in places like Kruger National Park that they have had to be culled. Perhaps not now, but in the past.
There is an argument that if the trade in ivory was legalised there would be less poaching and numbers could/might/would increase again.
Just maybe, the best way for rhinos to become common again, is for people to be allowed to eat them…
Also, the big game hunters that established conservation groups like the WWF in the early 1960s killed animals for sport.
As regards what people think about the benefits of slurping tiger penis soup… I find belief in life after death bizarre.
Even I am guilty of pointless sentimentality when it comes to protection. I check the tops of tallowoods obsessively on windless late arvos to find koalas that are almost never there. Yet if koalas ever came back in large numbers, with predators eliminated, they could easily be a pest in the altered modern conditions. Early conservation efforts faced the problem of deforestation by hungry koalas, and where they have been transported and protected in island environments they are a severe strain on the flora. Because of sensibilities they cannot be culled but are instead sterilised or re-transported, probably a cruel and expensive measure.
Conservation will take vast amounts of science (as opposed to cultish scientism) and billions of dollars. People do wonderful things already for our wildlife, but we have to be prepared to do hard things as well as wonderful things. Some of the billions frittered on temple offerings to the climate priesthood will have to find their way to hard conservation. National Parks and Forestry can seldom afford to to fix a fenceline, and often do pointless and irritating things to save or get funds. Okay, green superstition is now rife in these organisations, but there are plenty of knowledgeable and hands-on people who can do great things given the money and resources.
There is no Gaia. She does not exist. There is no pristine. It never existed. If we see value in certain things in their present shifting state, conserving them will always cost a lot. In a situation like Henbury where you have commerce, land and wilderness happily meshing it is obscene to abandon it to green fetishism and subsidy manipulations. Just obscene.
Luke asks: “Has anyone thought that farming rhinos might be tad more complex than farming Bos taurus?” The obvious answer is: “Everybody who reads Jen’s blog”. We should be glad that there are rich and energetic people prepared to try and fail at such things, since most of us would be aware of the extreme risk and difficulty involved. Involving the very rich in conservation is a no-brainer. It’s just lucky there are very rich people prepared to buy in, when it’s so much easier to get into a racket like carbon trading – pioneered by Enron and Lehman Bros!
Jen, the free market IS the solution.
The rhino are similar to many struggling wildlife in the world today. They are being wiped out by feral pressure and there is no legal, commercial, economic pressure to assist them.
By legalising the sale of rhino horn it would become a small, harmless, niche market. I nearly said it might even shrink and shrivel to almost nothing but then I realised that is the problem it ‘s supposed to prevent.
Campbell Newman is aware of this problem in Qld and is introducing eco-tourism in NPs to put commercial value on wildlife.
Wild animals viewed in the wild have enormous commercial, economic value in this over-urbanised world.
It is the same principle.
People are doing PhD theses on this because the world is beginning to realise that this is how it works.
sd,
Free market is a sorry traitorous illusion, or why is a little bottle of flavoured milk from Belgium 95c in Deniliquin ? Heart of a dairy area. Not subsidised?
Why are tomatoes from Italy 90 ? Yeah right !
Why are SPC peaches TWICE the price in Shepparton, ( the place of manufacture)
of South African ones ? Come on, LOOK
All lies
But in advance of anything he says, Bob Katter is now ” The Maverick ” Cause he says it is wrong.
I just noticed that he is the only one who does care about this free trade lie
Yes Ian, subsidies are a worry but even subsidised “free” market would be of value in the case where there is currently just the sounds of silence.
Which ever way rhinos were anaesthetised and their horns removed, powdered and sold, would lead to their better survival rates even if the authorities fully socialised the cost and privatised the profit.
Even if Luke revolted at the thought.
But I think you’ll find Bob K’s policies on ethanol, nationalising assets, motor vehicle manufacturing etc., are also riddled with the S word.
The Rhino has evolved from the Paraceratherium; wouldn’t it be great if a few of those could be genetically engineered. Viagra would be completely superseded.
Well you’re advocating Jen – is your capacity for editorialising slipping on this “evidence based blog”. You should be briefing us on rhino population dynamics and ability for herd increase.
Don’t just bluff.
I’m not against dehorning if it works. But you need to know this cycle of dehorning is needed repetitively – no evidence on at what levels will poachers kill. Mortality from dehorning is? Will poachers kill to make the price go even higher. Why bother tracking animals and getting close when you can just shoot them.
As usual wild assertions galore here and no serious evidence. If it were organic farming you’d be advocating people be educated and the wasteful process shut down. Why be selectively indulgent?
Luke, you make some valid points, but it is also clear from your comments that you have not read the article on which this post is based… ‘The Rhino Poaching Crisis: A Market Analysis’ by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes can be downloaded at
http://www.rhino-economics.com/
The idea of this blog post was to introduce the concept and provide a link to a detailed proposition.
I did live in Africa for 7 years and got some exposure to the issues there then, but it is true I’m not up to date and would like to see some verification of Michaels story.
PS What the evidence does suggest, is that banning trade in rhino horns and elephant tusks is counter productive.
Hi sd,
I know I am wobbling o/t, but I think that BK knows what most movers and shakers in Cantberra will not admit.
The EC countries are NEVER going to throw their rural producers to the wolves.
The Japanese are NEVER going to kill off their rice farmers, ( apparently the big problem is finding young ones).
The reason ? They have starved and they know the supermarket will not save them.
The motor industry in China and Malaysia is almost a branch of the Govt.
And today’s breaking news is that the NZ Labour Party and the Greens are proposing to give the peoples electricity assets back to them . Big business is not amused, of course.
We in MRCC service area had the cheapest domestic power in Oz and Murrumbidgee CC had the cheapest industrial . The the pollies fixed it, they “denationalized” it.
It now costs $50 a month to run a small fluoro security light.
This is modern economic reality. Somebody needs to acknowledge the facts.
Luke
“Mortality from dehorning is?”
It happens, I actually saw a doco that mentioned it but it had to do with the health of the individual animal not the dehorning. It reacted badly to the tranquilizer.
Since they mentioned this rare occurrence I’d say the % of death is so small as to never mind.
———————————————–
Ian Thomson
Europe and Japan, as you said, will never ever let themselves become totally dependent
on foreign food supplies. Simple as that, one had to live through the wars they did to understand that.
Oh sure, they pay lip service to “free” trade as long as it benefits them, same as the Americans.
Well, that is proof.
Sorry Luke old mate
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-19/rhino-heads-stolen-from-dublin-museum/4638474
It pays for an International Gang to risk armed holdups in Europe ?
Just noticed , not mentioned there on the link. The perps are an Irish International gang, who have been dong armed holdups of patrons and staff all over Europe for about 5 years ( for ivory and horns ).
Because they were Irish , the museum removed them from display , for safety reasons and they then got done in storage.
Baddies are a family based gang called the (some town in Ireland, “Rovers” ) , who have just recently found this a lucrative crime.
Ian, say it ain’t so!!! Not the IRISH ROVERS!?!?!?!?!?!
Oh wait, maybe you mean “officially called the Rathkeale Rovers but also dubbed the Dead Zoo Gang by Dublin tabloids ”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/gang-steals-rhino-horns-irish-museum-storage-18986074
Here are a number of papers and articles that may shed some light on the issue here:
http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/117/1175862394.pdf
http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/117/1175856639.pdf
http://www.blackrhino.org/nzimbabwe_rhino_dehorning.htm
http://www.oscap.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Joel-Berger-Paper-Namibia.pdf
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/249/1324/83.abstract
Filing this here:
Dear Hank, Jennifer,
To keep you updated on additional material that has stemmed from our Science paper in case it is of use:
Attached is another piece on a legal trade published in Decision Point – a monthly science-based publication for environmental decision-makers and conservation managers.
Also, below is a 40 minute lecture I gave on this linked to our paper in Science now available online. Please feel free to distribute these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3rHC9Thw88
I have also attached an updated selection of the press coverage associated with our paper if that is of use or interest.
Thank you once again for your support and inputs on this, and I look forward to further updates from you on this issue as they emerge.
Kind regards,
Duan
Dr Duan Biggs
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions @
The Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science
University of Queensland