The world's biggest rhino breeder has announced plans to sell part of his massive stockpile of horns in a global online auction, sparking concern that this could undermine the 40-year-old international ban on rhino-horn trading.
Billed as the world's first "legal rhino-horn auction", the three-day sale is scheduled to start on August 21.
South African businessman and game rancher John Hume, who has nearly 1,500 rhinos at his game farm in North West, has a stockpile of nearly six tons of horns that he wants to sell. He has won a series of court battles to overturn the moratorium on the domestic sale of rhino horn.Hume - along with other private rhino breeders - has been removing horns from his rhinos for several years. The animals are anaesthetised and the top section of the horn is removed so that it can regrow naturally as part of a "bloodless horn-harvesting" operation.
In an attempt to halt rhino poaching, a ban on the international sale of rhino horn came into force in 1977 among signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This was followed by a 2009 ban on the sale of rhino horn in South Africa.
Hume plans to sell 500kg of horns in the online auction. A condition of sale is that the horns will have to remain in South Africa until global trade is unbanned or foreign buyers are granted import and export permits from South Africa and their home nations.
Jo Shaw, rhino programme manager for the Worldwide Fund for Nature in South Africa, has questioned why buyers would want to bid for rhino horn when the international trade remains illegal...