A last-minute rescue plan for farmed rhino

Jason Gilchrist, a lecturer at the School of Applied Sciences at Edinburgh Napier University, writes that conservation charity African Parks plans to release 2 000 rhino into the wild across Africa.

- Jason Gilchrist

With all the terrible news on climate change, it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening with particular species. So, in case you missed it, a new report has bad news for Earth’s five surviving species of rhino.

Poaching for rhino horn continues to threaten populations of rhino in Africa, and the two smallest and most endangered species of rhino – the Sumatran rhino and the Javan rhino – tread ever closer to being unable to sustain themselves in the wild, due to habitat loss and low population sizes.

THE GOOD NEWS FOR RHINOS

While we should never become desensitised to wildlife crime, environmental destruction and species extinctions, there is also some remarkable news. Conservation charity African Parks recently bought the largest private collection of rhino in the world: the Platinum Rhino farm at Klerksdorp, near Johannesburg, previously owned by South African businessman John Hume.

African Parks plans to release the total Platinum Rhino ranch population, currently 2 000 rhino (amounting to roughly 15% of the global white rhino population), into the wild across Africa over the next 10 years. That is good news. As an ecologist, I don’t see the point in conserving a wild species to keep in captivity. Wildlife belongs in the wild.

Hume’s plan to buy up and breed farmed rhino might have allowed him to sell horns for a profit once legal international trade was permitted. But that didn’t happen.