South Africa tries to justify legal rhino horn sales again

South Africa is trying to have us believe that it is seeing success in combating rhino poaching in recent months and, to ensure the trend continues, the country is considering legalising trade in rhino horns to stop the killing of the animals.

Rose Masela, head of national wildlife information management at the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), said her department has covered some ground in slowing the rate of rhino poaching.

“If we hadn't made the interventions that we did we'd probably be seeing the rhino population going toward extinction maybe in the next few years,” Masela told journalists from the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Southern Africa yesterday at Bloomberg's Johannesburg office.

So how come we are on course to lose More rhinos this year than last year? (979 so far this year -1004 last year)

Adding, Masela said legalizing the trade in rhino horn is one solution government is mulling. She said this will drive down the price of rhino horns, hitting the poachers in the pocket in the process. “There's very little we can do about the belief in the use of rhino horn that exists in other countries. Legalization would be a more medium-term solution,” she said.

The next step could be proposing to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, an international agreement between governments, that rhino horn trade be legalized, said Masela.

Have they learned Nothing after the same proposal was passed in 2003 and 105,000kg of Ivory was sold to China and Japan in order to flood the market, reduce the price to stop the poaching. Look where we are now!

The demand is insatiable;the price of ivory has skyrocketed from US $5/kg in 1989 to a wholesale price of US $2,100/kg in China in 2014. Retail prices are said to be much higher.

Why do I get the feeling that some people are set to make a lot of money from this?