The world’s largest rhino breeder John Hume says if Rhino horn trade is legalised, poachers would be stopped in their tracks.
Hume’s fighting to secure the legalisation of international trade in horns, which has been outlawed since 1977.
John Hume owns more Rhinos than anyone else in the world.
He has over a one thousand here in his farm in the North West province in South Africa.
Hume believes that that his herd would be safer if trade in the rhinos’ coveted horns was legalised.
The vast Kruger Park remains the epicentre of the rhino-poaching crisis in this country despite concerted efforts to protect them.
Hume thinks it’s best to harvest the horns to keep poachers away.
He is lobbying to overturn bans that have been in place locally since 2009 and internationally since 1977.
Many conservationists say that a legal marketplace would only raise demand.
Hume disagrees.
Africa’s Rhinos are seriously under threatened by poaching – which ultimately feeds the demand for Rhino horn in Vietnam and China.
It’s a lucrative market. Rhino horn can fetch up to 60 000 US dollars per kilogram in the illegal market.
Over the past nine years 5,940 African Rhinos have been killed for their horns.
South Africa in particular has lost at least 5,061 rhinos between 2008 and 2015.
The Rhinos are dehorned on a regular basis here.
Hume says that’s partly for security reasons and also to add to the rapidly expanding stockpile of horns that he had not been allowed to sell since early 2009 when government declared a moratorium on the domestic sale of rhino horns.
The horns are measured and a line is marked precisely where it will be cut, making sure blood vessels are not touched.
The procedure is painless for the animal and like human nails – soon the horns grow back.
Hume says it’s an expensive exercise. According to experts, if poaching continues to increase at this pace, the rhino could be extinct by 2025.
