#rhino

Heroes and Villains

/ PK Read / Leave a comment

Update below.

You know a cause has achieved cult status when it makes it into the comic books.

Marvel Comics has come out with a double pack of comic books featuring the popular character of Wolverine and the issue of the illegal trade in endangered animal parts. Written and illustrated by the great Phil Jimenez, the comics couldn’t be more timely.

The Dallas Safari Club auctioned off a chance to hunt an endangered rhino for $350,000 last week, over widespread protests and petitions.

Savage Wolverine #12 Art: Jimenez/Marvel

Savage Wolverine #12
Art: Jimenez/Marvel

Ostensibly, the money will go towards conservation efforts in Namibia. The hunt has been sanctioned by the government.

I can understand the need to cull non-breeding, older male rhinos from a herd to promote younger, healthier males that might otherwise be attacked or intimidated. I can understand the Namibian government wanting to earn hard cash for a cull that would otherwise only cost them time and money.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Paying a vast sum of money for the thrill and privilege of hunting an endangered animal, even in the name of conservation, does little more than glorify the illicit status of that animal’s value to humans, and add value to the illegally traded body parts of poached animals.

This auction comes the same week that saw an Irish native, Michael Slattery Jr., convicted and sentenced to almost two years in prison for coming to the United States to buy mounted rhino horns, which he sold on to Asian buyers for an estimated $30,000 per pound.

Horns of endangered black rhinos. According to the prosecutors in the Slattery case, the horns he sold were resold twice and tripled in price before leaving the U.S. Photo: US Attorney's Office - Eastern District of New York

Endangered black rhino horn.
Photo: US Attorney’s Office – Eastern District of New York

Mr. Slattery claimed he was just doing business  and saw no connection between his actions and its effect on endangered species. According to the prosecutors in the Slattery case, the horns he sold were resold twice and tripled in price before leaving the U.S. Slattery argued that he was just a salesman, turning a dollar on something already there.

As Judge John Gleeson of United States District Court, who presided over the trial, is quoted as saying by way of comparison to Slattery’s defense, “‘I didn’t make these drugs, all I did was distribute them; I didn’t create this child pornography, I just distribute it.’”

The hunters and poachers in Savage Wolverine don’t fare well at the hands (well, claws) of Wolverine, but he reserves just as much anger for those who trade in the endangered animal business.

I wonder where Wolverine would stand on the trophy hunt auction of endangered animals.

UPDATE: 21 May 2015. The rhino auctioned for hunting was shot dead on 20 May 2015 by Corey Knowlton, the Texas hunter who won the auction bid.

From the AFP: Knowlton stated, “I think people have a problem just with the fact that I like to hunt… I want to see the black rhino as abundant as it can be. I believe in the survival of the species.”

Since 2012, Namibia has sold five licences each year to kill individual rhinos, saying the money is essential to fund conservation projects and anti-poaching protection. The only rhinos selected for the hunts are old ones that no longer breed and that pose a threat to younger rhinos.

Sorry, I just don’t agree. This is no different from countries selling off illegal rhino horn or elephant ivory seized from traders.

As long as the animals are worth more dead than they are alive, for any reason, poaching and the trade in illegal animal parts will be encouraged.

Savage Wolverine #13 Art: Jimenez/Marvel

Savage Wolverine #13
Art: Jimenez/Marvel

Precedent Setting

/ PK Read / 2 Comments

Update below.

At its 2014 convention, the Dallas Safari Club will be auctioning off the rare chance to kill an adult rhinoceros in Namibia and the even rarer chance to bring the trophy parts back home. The organizers say they can expect up to $750,000 dollars, and that every penny will go to the ‘Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia’’s Black Rhino’.

The hunt would be carried out with the permission of both the Namibian government and of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to import parts of the black rhino. These animal parts are otherwise highly controlled and illegal, as there are only an estimated 5000 black rhinos left in the world and they are both protected under the Endangered Species Act, and heavily poached for their horns.

The DSC 2014 convention banner

The DSC 2014 convention banner

This notion of high profile hunting as a means of conservation is nothing new, and hunters have often been aligned with conservationists when it comes to protecting land and species.

However, not one article I have read on this has mentioned the background to the strange approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

Earlier this year, the USFWS set a precedent by issuing a permit allowing the import of a black rhino trophy. The permit was the first USFWS permit ever allowing parts of an endangered species hunted abroad to be brought into the United States.

It was approved  following an import application filed by the hunter himself, with the assistance of lawyer John J. Jackson III, who runs Conservation Force, a Louisiana-based conservation non-profit organization.

David K. Reinke poses with the black rhino he shot in 2009. The work of Conservation Force means he was able to bring the horn back to the U.S. Photo: Thormählen & Cochran Safaris

David K. Reinke poses with the black rhino he shot in 2009.
The advocacy work of Conservation Force helped him bring the horn back to the U.S.
Photo: Thormählen & Cochran Safaris

For insight into the Conservation Force strategy, reading the group’s Updates and Alerts page is enlightening.

Most entries deal with overturning the endangered status of various listed species (lions, polar bears, etc.); legal attempts to reduce or eliminate restrictions on the importation of restricted animal parts; and finally, an update on the Dallas Safari Club’s award to John and Chrissie Jackson of Conservation Force for their “tireless advocacy of hunting as an integral part of wildlife conservation.”

Through a variety of strategies including tourism and rural development, Namibia has been very successful – far more so than its neighbor South Africa – in preventing poaching and promoting the recovery of the black rhino population without the assistance and funds of high end foreign hunters. So I am not sure what kind of value this new trend (if two cases can be called a trend) is supposed to add to conservation.

 

Credit: Planet Save

Credit: Planet Save

I am not fully versed in the value of hunting individual animals from a small genetic pool of an endangered species like the black rhino (Diceros bicornis); perhaps it’s a useful method.

I also don’t know much about the ‘Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia’’s Black Rhino’, the fund to which the Dallas Safari Club intends to donate the auction amount from the black rhino hunt – I was unable to find any listings online which mentioned this trust fund, but for all I know it could be part of one of Namibia’s many long-standing legitimate conservation groups.

I can’t claim agreement with the argument that promoting the hunting of endangered species, putting a high monetary value the hunt and on the very parts for which these animals are being poached into extinction, is a viable path towards saving these animals – not only for our future generations, but for theirs.

What I do know is that the Conservation Force’s determined efforts over many years to establish an endangered species import precedent succeeded this year with the USFWS permit.

I am also quite sure that this first trophy hunt auction, which would not have been possible without that precedent, will almost certainly not be the last of its kind.

Source: Susan Gainen

 

UPDATE: 21 May 2015. The rhino auctioned for hunting was shot dead on 20 May 2015 by Corey Knowlton, the Texas hunter who won the auction bid.

From the AFP: Knowlton stated, “I think people have a problem just with the fact that I like to hunt… I want to see the black rhino as abundant as it can be. I believe in the survival of the species.”

Since 2012, Namibia has sold five licences each year to kill individual rhinos, saying the money is essential to fund conservation projects and anti-poaching protection. The only rhinos selected for the hunts are old ones that no longer breed and that pose a threat to younger rhinos.

Sorry, I just don’t agree. This is no different from countries selling off illegal rhino horn or elephant ivory seized from traders.

As long as the animals are worth more dead than they are alive, for any reason, poaching and the trade in illegal animal parts will be encouraged.

 

Magical Thinking

/ PK Read / 2 Comments

Image credit: laschi / 123RF Banque d'imagesHumans like to imbue animals with special qualities. Dogs are loyal in some cultures, dirty in others, and a source of meat in still others. It seems that the more impressive the animal is to humans – especially top predators, large animals like elephants, sharks and rhinos, or unusual animals like pangolins – the more we impart magical thinking to their body parts. Teeth, tusks, horns, claws, scales – it’s easy to think that these might have wondrous powers for human use, all evidence to the contrary.

South Africa, home to over 70% of the world’s remaining rhinos, announced it will be seeking permission to sell some of its stock of rhinoceros horn, with a black market value estimated at $1 billion, from CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, at the next major meeting in 2016.

The main markets for rhino horn are Vietnam and China, where the horn is sold at prices equalling that of gold, and is used in ‘traditional’ medicine for a number of ailments.

According to a Reuters article, “up until about 2010, only a handful (of rhinos) were poached, but the number shot up when a rumour spread that rhino horn had cured a Vietnamese minister’s relative of cancer.” Studies have shown that rhino horn is about as medically effective for any given ailment as biting one’s own fingernails.

The government of South Africa has proposed legalizing the trade of rhino horn in order to better control it, and to sell off the existing stock to flood the market and lower prices. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.

To my mind selling rhino horn, illegally or through legal channels, only promotes the erroneous notion that the horns have any medicinal value.

As hopeful as the proposal might be, I can’t really see how, in the long run, this will protect the animals themselves or prevent their demise any more than ground rhino horn can prevent or treat cancer.

Rhino numbers Source: Savingrhinos.org

Rhino numbers
Source: Savingrhinos.org

More:

Bloomberg article –South Africa Backs Proposal to Legalize Rhino Horn Trade by Mike Cohen & Paul Burkhardt

2012 article that discusses the legalization of rhino horn trade.

International Rhino Foundation website

African Wildlife Foundation website

ScienceDaily article – Scientists Crack Rhino Horn Riddle

Save The Rhino website

 

End Of Year Happy #4

/ PK Read / 1 Comment
Black rhinos by nightPhoto: BBC

Black rhinos by night
Photo: BBC

There’s much that could be said about the rhinoceros, from its fearsome strength, to its rapid and sad decline due to hunting, to the recent differentiation of northern and southern white rhinoceroses into two distinct species because they show such genetic disparity (making for six living species, the northern white being the rarest).

In an upcoming BBC One series, Africa, something was learned about the black rhino that surprised researchers and documentary filmmakers alike. The black rhino had always been considered a solitary species, with individuals seeking each other out purely for the purposes of propagation.

However, during the course of filming the documentary, a new, highly-sensitive starlight camera was employed to film the black rhino by night. And lo, it turns out that the black rhino, mostly reticent by day, is actually a sociable party animal by night. At a watering hole in the Kalahari, filmmakers were astonished to find large groups of rhinos, all ages and social standing, meeting up once the sun went down. Not only that, the animals were affectionate, playful and friendly with one another.

Why is this an End Of Year Happy?

Because I like the idea that there is always mystery awaiting to surprise and astonish, even among life at its most observed. Even when we know so much, there is so much more just beyond our sight. I like the implementation of something called a “starlight camera” to spy on secretly playful rhinos.

But most of all, I like the notion that creatures we consider grouchy, antisocial and generally uncooperative can prove us utterly wrong in our assumptions, that there can be communion and agreement in what looks like hostile territory if we just have the ability to see it – and sometimes this ability might require taking a completely new perspective.

And with that, I wish everyone a very happy 2013.

Read here and here about the BBC series and the work on rhinos.

Here is more information on the starlight camera.