BUSINESS MAVERICK 168: Statistics show rhino poaching in South Africa plunged 33% in 2020

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Rhino poaching declined sharply in South Africa last year, according to the latest official data. In 2020, there were 394 known cases of rhino being killed for their horns, down 33% on the 594 that were killed in 2019. This is also well down from the peak of 1,215, a grim milestone reached in 2014. A surge in demand in newly affluent and fast-growing Asian economies such as Vietnam, where rhino horn is coveted for medicinal purposes as well as bling, is behind this dreadful state of affairs.

There are a number of factors behind the sharp drop in rhino poaching. Last year, lockdown measures to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic clearly curtailed the movement of rhino poaching syndicates. The poaching toll over the past decade has also reduced rhino numbers and fewer animals represent fewer opportunities to poachers.

In fact, the statistics also reveal the relative ineffectiveness of the government in this regard compared to the private sector. And given the cumulative losses in state reserves over the past decade, notably in the Kruger, it is probably the case that more than half of South Africa’s rhino population is now privately owned. A PROA survey found that, at the end of 2017, almost 7,000 or about 46% of a national herd of white rhinos estimated to number 15,200 was found on private land.

By contrast, private rhino owners have put their own capital into a living and breathing asset, and so they are taking increasingly costly measures to protect it. A study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Letters found that 28% of South Africa’s private rhino-owners were disinvesting from the species.

This is in many ways a conservation success story. Numbers count and we are, after all, talking about the preservation of an iconic species of African megafauna.

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