The planned sale of a rhino “impact bond”, aimed at growing the population of the endangered black rhino, is seen by its backers as a test for the creation of a conservation debt market that could be used for everything from protecting species facing extinction to preserving wildlife areas.
“We see this as a shift in the conservation-funding model,” said Oliver Withers, head of conservation finance and enterprise at the Zoological Society of London. “There is huge scope for this to be used for other species. We started out with the framework of ‘Can we build an impact bond for conservation?’.
There are about 5,500 black rhino in the wild in Africa, where they are an indigenous species and mostly live in just four countries, down from 65,000 in 1970. That compares with about 20,000 of the larger white rhinos that mostly live in SA. Black rhino weigh up to 1.4 tonnes compared with the 2.5-tonne white rhino.Rhinos in Africa are under threat from poaching, mostly because of demand in Vietnam and China for powder from their horns that is believed to cure cancer and improve virility.
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