World's biggest rhino breeder rushes to court at eleventh hour

John Hume‚ the world’s biggest rhino breeder‚ is rushing to court in Pretoria on Friday in an eleventh-hour bid to sell more than 250 horns in the first “legal” horn auction in decades.

The online auction – which has been advertised in Chinese and Vietnamese on Hume’s website – is due to begin at noon on Monday. This has sparked concern that the sale might undermine a 40-year-old ban on global rhino horn sales.

Hume‚ a wildlife rancher and breeder who has more than 1‚500 rhinos on his ranch in the North West province‚ won a series of court cases earlier this year to overturn an eight-year long moratorium on rhino horns being sold inside South African borders.

Though the commercial sale of horns to international buyers has been banned for four decades under a global conservation treaty‚ Hume won the legal right to sell them domestically in April.

But now he claims that Environment Minister Edna Molewa is preventing him from selling them by refusing to issue a permit that he alleges has already been issued by officials in her department.

While Hume could not be reached for comment on Thursday night‚ fellow rhino breeder Pelham Jones said Hume was launching an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court on Friday to compel Molewa to release a permit that would allow Hume to sell about 250 horns‚ weighing about 500kg.

“This is not even the eleventh hour. It is 30 seconds to midnight and they are being obstructive‚” he said.

Jones‚ who also chairs the 330-member Private Rhino Owners Association (PROA)‚ has argued that selling “bloodless” horns legally on the domestic market will help to curb the illegal slaughter of rhinos at a time when more than 1‚000 have been killed by poaching gangs for four consecutive years.

Private rhino owners argue that their animals can be farmed by removing their horns while under sedation‚ ensuring that they stay alive to grow more horns – relieving pressure on wild rhino populations that remain under constant threat by illegal poaching gangs.

Hume’s attorney‚ Izak du Toit‚ confirmed the case on Thursday night.

Du Toit said he was informed last week that the permit for the auction had been issued and could be collected from the offices of the Department of Environmental Affairs.

“When we sent people there to go and collect the permit‚ we were inexplicably told that we may not collect the permit. We therefore had no other option but to approach the High Court of South Africa for relief.”

Opponents of Hume’s online auction argue that there is no commercial demand or use for rhino horns in South Africa and that proxies for foreign buyers will try to exploit the domestic auction as a method to ship horns illegally to China and Vietnam at a later stage.

Molewa issued a press statement on Thursday reiterating her commitment to upholding the legal provisions of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)‚ which banned global sales of rhino horns in 1977 in a bid to curb the illegal slaughter of rhinos in Africa and Asia.

Molewa stated that‚ as of Wednesday‚ no permits had been issued to any sellers or buyers for next week’s proposed rhino horn sale. This contradicts claims by private rhino owners that officials in her department had in fact issued a permit.

Molewa said she had “noted with concern the continued misrepresentation by the media and a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on the processes associated with the domestic trade in rhino horn”.

“The primary claim is that the Republic of South Africa does not have systems in place to ensure that any prospective domestic sale of rhino horn takes place in a strictly regulated manner - and does not contribute to an increase in the illegal international trade.”

She said her department wanted to place on record that legal provisions were in place to ensure the domestic trade in rhino horn was strictly controlled and that the prohibition on commercial international trade by CITES was not violated.