Five years later, the South African government passed the Game Theft Act, which allows people to own rhinos and other game on their property, provided it has been enclosed with fencing. In 1986, Natal Parks Board started selling to private operations, too. By the 1960s, flush with rhinos, a government organization called the Natal Parks Board began selling and donating animals to other African reserves, and to zoos around the world. In the 1890s, the animals reached their low point, numbering just a few dozen.įrom this bastion - now called the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park - the population rebounded. Every southern white rhino today is descended from a single population in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. In the late 19th century, European settlers killed thousands of the animals. “Show me the good grazing, and assure me that you can keep the bullets away, and I will show you my rhinos thriving.”Ī frica is home to two of the five surviving rhinoceros species: the larger white rhino, a grass grazer, and the smaller black rhino, which browses on trees and bushes. “Surely that’s what we all want,” he told Undark. Sitting in his modest home office, which is adorned with rhino pictures and carvings, Hume maintained he is adding to an endangered species’ numbers. It’s unclear who would take over Hume’s herd - and how a South African state balancing intense fiscal pressures with massive social needs would pay for a mass rhino relocation. The new policy could eventually undermine the legal basis for Hume’s breeding project, leaving the herd in limbo. In her email, Yako expressed concerns about “a single operation that has a large number of rhino under intensive management and breeding” - seemingly a reference to Hume, although Eleanor Momberg, a spokesperson for the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, wrote in an email to Undark that Yako and other panelists were no longer available for further comment because their contracts had expired. His ranch also appears to be a prime target of the new legislation. None of them has an operation as large as Hume’s, whose herd may account for up to 13 percent of the global population of white rhinos. Visual: Jürgen Bätz/Picture Alliance via Getty Images John Hume, owner of the largest rhino herd in South Africa, which may account for up to 13 percent of the global population of white rhinos. By PROA’s own estimates, there are between 150 and 180 private rhino owners in South Africa nearly all of them are White. The politics are fraught as well, and charged by South Africa’s racial tensions: Proponents of the new policy point out that the country’s Black majority has often been excluded from the benefits of rebounding game populations. Now, he added, “the government is recommending that these captive breeding operations, which have proven to be highly, highly successful, and are achieving the best breeding outcome one could hope for, are to be shut down.” The group is considering all options, including a legal challenge that would potentially ensnare the process in years of legal wrangling.Īt stake here are questions about how best to preserve a threatened species. “We have rhino in well-protected zones,” said Pelham Jones, chairman of the Private Rhino Owners Association, or PROA. After a public comment period, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment will refine the policy, then draft a white paper to send to Parliament.īut the prospect of losing their herds has alarmed many private rhino owners and conservationists, who say the policy will make southern white rhinos more vulnerable to poaching. The panel’s report has been accepted by the South African cabinet, signaling top-level political support. While Yako and her colleagues acknowledge the role of private reserves in helping to build up rhino populations, they conclude it’s time to move the more intensively managed private populations back into wilder habitats. In an email to Undark, the panel’s chair, Pamela Yako, expressed two concerns about intensive breeding and management: “that this, firstly, compromises the genetics of the population and secondly compromises their ability to independently survive in the wild.” According to the panel and a subsequent government policy paper, captive breeding operations like the one owned by Hume are potentially harming the species’ future. In December 2020, a government panel recommended phasing out intensive and captive rhino breeding in the country, as part of a broader set of policies for wildlife conservation. Related Bringing Bison Back to the Great Plainsīut the fate of Hume’s rhinos - and South Africa’s unusual game privatization experiment - hang in the balance.
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