Black Rhinos May Face A Hornless, But Safe, Future

The only way to save the black rhino is to hunt it - with dart guns - according to the Safari Club International.

Although the black rhino has had international protection, its numbers have diminished from 80,000 when first protected to 2,000 today. The Congress on International Trade in Endangered Species says protection has failed the black rhino, said John Jackson III, chairman of SCI’s Renewable Wildlife Resources Committee.

“Protectionism has driven it to the brink of extinction,” he said.

It is being slaughtered by poachers seeking its horn.

The black rhino is making its final stand in Zimbabwe, which has asked SCI to help protect it, Jackson said during the 19,000-member hunting and conservation group’s East Coast Convention.

To the south, its cousin, the white rhino, is in much better shape.

“The white rhino was saved by sport hunting in South Africa,” Jackson said.

“If the preservationist-conservation world would let the sustainable use conservation world do its job, which we have done so well with other species, we will save the black rhino,” promised Don J. Kirn, SCI president.

“Wildlife will only survive if there’s a value to the hunter-user and to those on whose land the wildlife lives,” Kirn said.

Sport hunting of the black rhino would start with dart guns loaded with knockout drugs. The hunter’s trophy would be the horn. The rhino would be released alive.

That would give the rhino value to the sport hunter, value to the local people, value to the government and take away its value to the poacher, Jackson said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must approve the idea for American hunters to be part of it.

Since the black rhino is listed under the Endangered Species Act, the service must grant a permit for each rhino horn brought into the country.

So far the service has not granted such permits, Jackson said.

Unlike the white rhino, a creature of the open plains, the black rhino stays mostly in thick brush, Jackson said. There would be no scenes of hunters chasing rhinos in trucks.

“You’d probably have to crawl in on your belly” through the brush, he said.

For that privilege, the hunter would pay about $15,000, including license and trophy fees to the government, and room, board and guide fees to the local outfitter.

In five years, the rhino would grow the horn back and be huntable again, meaning a live animal could have a value of $45,000 or $60,000 over its expected 30-year life, far more than it would have dead by the hand of a poacher, Jackson said.

Eventually old, highly territorial bulls could be hunted with guns, adding perhaps another $30,000 to an animal’s economic value, Jackson said.

That kind of economic value would be a big incentive for ranchers to protect black rhino on their land, Jackson said.

“If we can save it in private land, it’s saved.”