Making a case to permit the legal trade in rhino horn

In the past 26 years, South African John Hume, aged 76, has bred 1,279 white rhinos on his private property, and is currently protecting 1,626 rhinos of which 300 are pregnant therefore making it 1,926 lives of rhinos in total.

He has been remarkably successful and has lost just 32 rhinos to poachers, compared with 7,048 rhinos poached in the whole of South Africa since the Moratorium on Domestic Trade in Rhino Horn, up to and including 2017. In the four years before the imposition of the moratorium on February 13, 2009, there was virtually no poaching. This is an outstanding contribution to the long-term security of the species, for which he deserves an enormous vote of thanks and appreciation from the international conservation community. This success could not have been achieved without an unprecedented level of financial support, all of which has come from Hume’s life savings. Protecting rhinos in today’s world from increasing attacks by poaching gangs is an extremely expensive operation, as all the government conservation agencies in Africa know only too well.