How to Save The Rhino, Dr Ian Player

Rhino Poaching Article By Dr Ian Player, 30th August 2011.

Firstly as founder of the Wilderness Leadership School in 1958, I would like to thank Rondebosch Boy’s High for their loyal support.  For over 30 years Rondebosch have been sending boys from their school on a Wilderness Leadership School Trail which Rondebosch call  their “White Rhino Trip”.  On a trip like this the boys walk in the wilderness, do night watch alone sitting around a fire reflecting and listening to the animal sounds and keeping everyone safe. It is here that they connect to the natural world and often have life changing experiences.

Ronderbosch can also be proud that Andrew Muir who went to Rondebosch school became the director of the Wilderness Leadership School and now the Wilderness Foundation.

Below is a story of how in the early days we saved the rhino from extinction and now more than ever we are needing everyone to try and help save what rhino we have left in whatever way possible.  We cannot allow them to become extinct, and watch these atrocities take place without doing something about it.  It is for this reason that I am telling my story below of how “Operation Rhino” took place.

I was in the IMfolozi Game Reserve in 1952, having been sent there on an anti-poaching patrol, and I will never forget my first view of a white rhino.  It was a misty morning and I was looking into a patch of bush when two white rhino came looming out of the mist, with steam rising from their flanks and their backs, and hundreds of stomoxys (stable flies) hovered above them. Something within me was deeply touched by this primeval scene, and I had an intuitive flash that somehow my life would be bound up with these great prehistoric animals. There was sacredness about their presence which is epitomized in the Golden Rhino found at Mapungubwe.

When white people came to Southern Africa, many thousands of white rhino roamed from Kuruman to the Zambezi River. Trophy hunters arrived in the 1820s and by the early 1890s the white rhino were thought to be extinct, until a hunter; Sir Henry McCallum, who was after black rhino at the junction of the White and the Black IMfolozi Rivers, shot two white rhino. This caused great consternation in the then Colony of Natal, and the Governor proclaimed three major game reserves; IMfolozi, Hluhluwe and Lake St. Lucia in 1897. These were the first parks in Africa - thanks to the white rhino. By the 1920s the white rhino population was estimated at 50. This increase was due to the dedicated work of Vaughan-Kirby; the Chief Game Conservator, and Mali Mdhletshe and other rangers.

In 1953, ranger Hendrik van Schoor and I did the first aerial count of the white rhino. Our pilot was Des van der Westhuizen had an intimate aerial knowledge of the game reserves. We counted 437 rhino.  At that time there were an estimated 60,000 black rhino on the continent of Africa, and 2,000 of the Northern white rhino in the Belgian Congo, Sudan and Uganda. Today the Northern white rhino is extinct in those territories and the black rhino reduced to some 4,800.

Thanks to Operation Rhino (1961) we reintroduced the southern white rhino into all its former habitats.  In 1970 I was tasked to travel to the UK, Europe and the USA to sell excess rhino.  In that same year the white rhino was put on the hunting list.  Ironically this led to an increase because the game ranching fraternity was buying rhino, selling them to overseas hunters for high prices and the money reinvested into buying more land, which in turn provided more habitat for the rhino and other species. The translocated white rhino in the Kruger National Park bred prolifically, and by 2009 the world population was estimated at 20,000 - a phenomenal success, considering that there was a definite count of only 437 in 1953.

In 2008, those of us involved in the original Operation Rhino looked back with satisfaction and thought we could leave this planet knowing we had done a good job. Then the rhino killing began and by the end of the following year 333 white rhino had been killed, as well as some black rhino. This year, 270 rhino have been killed so far. Because of their large numbers, the white rhino are acting as a buffer against the killing of the black rhino; but as white rhino numbers dwindle, so the black rhino becomes more vulnerable.

We now urgently need new Conservation strategies and for everyone to become involved. I am not in favour of dehorning, as we do not know what impact it will have on rhino behaviour and also because poachers will kill a rhino for the remaining stump, which was proved in Zimbabwe.

I believe the time has come to sell the rhino horn that South African Conservation agencies and game ranchers have accumulated as a result of natural mortality. There is much opposition by the Animal Rights movement, with which I have sympathy because of the ‘global swarming’ of our own species; 7 billion people and rising, and desecrating the earth. However, the increased killing because of the high price, ZAR400 000/kg, means we have to devise other means of ensuring the rhinos’ survival.  Conservation agencies are desperately short of money. Surely it is in the interest of both the rhino and conservation economics that we legalize the sale of rhino horn accumulated through natural mortality?  Our main task must be to protect the rhino populations inside national parks, game reserves and game ranches. 

There is a Zen saying, “What we need in the world today is to hear within us the sounds of the earth crying.”    I would add to this; rhino have a particularly plaintive cry which once heard is never forgotten. The screams of agony from rhino that have had their horns chopped off whilst still alive should reach out into the hearts of all of us.