A SWEEPING HISTORY OF AFRICA’S RHINOS CALLS FOR A RETHINK OF WILDLIFE TRADE POLICY
Keith Somerville passed away in September of last year before the publication of his final book. His untimely death has robbed Africa of one of its foremost wildlife chroniclers — a lifelong passion of Somerville’s.
This reviewer never had the privilege of meeting Somerville in person, but we often discussed wildlife and conservation issues remotely. His commentary was always cutting and insightful, his knowledge wide-ranging and extensive.
I have reviewed two of his previous books, on jackals and hyenas, and before his unexpected passing, I promised Somerville that I would review his new book on African rhinos. And so here it is.
Africa’s Threatened Rhinos: A History of Exploitation and Conservation is a sweeping and fascinating history of the continent’s rhinos and a clarion call for a rethink of failed wildlife trade policies.
Africa has two species of rhino, the white and black. The former is the biggest of the pair and is a grazer, while the latter is a browser. Both have two horns and this evolutionary blessing as a weapon in the rough African bush has been the species’ curse in the Anthropocene. People have long coveted rhino horn — comprised of keratin, a protein found in human fingernails — for a range of reasons
The latest surge in poaching
The latest surge in rhino poaching, which began about two decades ago, is just the most recent chapter in a long history of the pachyderm’s slaughter for the prized commodity protruding from its head.
Indeed, the trade in rhino horn has for centuries been part of worldwide commercial networks that pre-date the term “globalisation”.
“When the Portuguese rounded the Cape and established trade along the Indian Ocean coast and on to India, they competed with established Arab and Swahili traders, especially those based at Kilwa and in northern Mozambique,” Somerville writes.
“The Portuguese established trading posts on the coast and the Zambezi delta, obtaining ivory and rhino horn from the interior of south-central Africa and exporting much of it to India. The trade helped form a class of Indian merchants, known as Banyans, based in Indian Ocean ports and playing an important role in meeting the increasing demand for wildlife products by financing trading caravans sent into the interior.”
“It was in India that the idea took root that rhino horn was an aphrodisiac and for a time it was used that way. Centuries later, there remains a mistaken belief that the Chinese use rhino horn for that purpose.
“The trade in wildlife from Africa was also a feature of ancient Rome.
“By the fifth century BCE, the trans-Saharan traffic in live animals had become so lucrative that the Carthaginians sent major military expeditions across the Sahara to ensure the control of commerce in wild animals. Trade was disrupted by the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE), and it became a province of Rome. Romans would then have come into direct contact with African wildlife, including rhinos,” Somerville writes.
The Emperor Trajan exhibited more than 11,000 wild animals at games in 106 CE, including rhinos and elephants. Most of the animals were killed in combat with gladiators or in staged battles with other animals.
Animal welfare
Our 21st-century concepts of animal welfare were alien in the ancient world.
One of the things that struck this reviewer was the logistics involved. How the hell did ancient wranglers manage to capture live elephants and rhinos and transport them alive and kicking to Rome?
In the mid-20th century, Ian Player pioneered the capture and translocation of rhinos by darting the animals with tranquillisers — and there was a lot of trial and error involved. But 2,000 years earlier, rhinos were being captured and moved with rudimentary technologies.
Somerville does not explore this issue but it makes me wonder how this was accomplished.
Ancient Rome was famed for its aqueducts and other remarkable feats of engineering. But its capacity to capture and over long distances transport megafauna — for reasons that are appalling to a 21st-century audience — was also clearly a technical achievement of note.
Fast-forwarding to the modern era, Somerville pointedly notes that trade bans have simply not worked. In the 1970s, when the global ban on trade in rhino horn was imposed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), it was presumed that demand would wither.
But that’s not how commodity markets work.
“Data on the rhino horn trade shows that after CITES members had voted for a total ban on international trade in horn and all other rhino products from all five species by 1977, there was a sharp increase in consumer prices for horn in Asian markets — anticipating a reduction in available horn with the end of legal trade,” Somerville writes.
“The profits to be made from illegal trade in horn rocketed, with wholesale prices for rhino horn in Taiwan jumping from $17 per kilogram in 1977 to $477 in 1980.”
Such prices were a red rag for transnational criminal syndicates. For example, the price of gold has recently been soaring to record highs, and that is seen as the key driver behind a surge in illegal mining in South Africa.
If the supply of a coveted commodity is curtailed, its price is simply going to rise. The laws of economic gravity are not easily defied.
Somerville notes that there were many reasons behind the ban’s failure to put a lethal bullet through the beating heart of the trade.
North Yemen in the 1970s and 1980s was the main importer of rhino horn, where it is used to make dagger-like knives with curved blades worn by men as a badge honour for traditional dress. Commodity markets also respond to the very visible hand of culture and North Yemen was not a CITES member at that time, so it was not bound by the convention.
But in the bigger picture, the inadvertent consequence of the ban — in Somerville’s view — was to hand “... a monopoly to the illegal trade; a trade in the hands of increasingly sophisticated poaching networks and criminal syndicates”.
Think, for example, of the illegal gold trade. The criminal syndicates behind that hardly have a monopoly on the production of the precious metal — but their activities are still hugely lucrative.
Monopoly
For the global trade in illicit rhino horn, there is no legitimate industry to compete with for market share — it has a monopoly. On the other hand, it also does not have a legal industry to launder its criminal product through.
The focus over the past couple of decades has shifted to surging demand in Vietnam and China, fast-growing Asian economies with newly minted affluent classes who could afford rhino horn even at escalating prices.
Indeed, sky-high prices have been part of the attraction — having a bit of rhino horn on hand is a clear sign that one has made it and can splash the cash on bling.
“Whatever the intentions of CITES resolutions, they had limited impact on the ground,” Somerville notes. “One exacerbating factor was the shortage of resources for anti-poaching operations across the major range states, with the possible exception of South Africa.”
And even South Africa, the country with by far the most rhinos, was overwhelmed by a tsunami of poaching.
Somerville looks at both sides of the polarising debates about legalising the trade in rhino horn, which can be harvested by darting the animals as the horns regrow after they have been trimmed.
Anti-trade campaigners often resort to the questionable argument that a legal trade would stoke demand and trigger a new onslaught of poaching. But like it or not, demand is there, even if it usually stems from fantastical beliefs with no scientific basis in the curative powers of rhino horn.
Somerville ultimately concludes that bans have failed.
“I strongly believe that the trade ban has not worked and will not work. Rhino horn is a resource that can be harvested non-lethally and sustainably. It can earn income to encourage breeders, pay rangers and anti-poaching teams realistic salaries, and provide sophisticated surveillance and supply benefits that will gain the support of people around parks, reserves and ranches,” he writes.
Indeed, if one looks at South Africa, it is surely revealing to note that most of the national rhino herd is in private hands, and such owners have done a much better job of protecting the pachyderms than state-run reserves.
Private sector
The private sector has made a mega contribution to the conservation of megafauna. Yet private rhino owners have little in the way of financial incentives to remain in such a risky business.
Allowing them to harvest and sell horns in a transparent, regulated, legal market — which could serve to undermine the illicit trade — would simply make dollars as well as sense. Rhino horn stocks held by the private sector and governments in range states is a store of wealth that could be unlocked to further the cause of conservation.
But there is a competing school of thought led by animal welfare and rights activists that holds that no wild animal or its body parts should be commercialised for trade. This line in the sand is largely drawn between conservationists who see utility in the consumptive use of wildlife and those who only envision a non-consumptive approach.
This has presented the main stumbling block to a legal trade, and it is telling that it is usually folks up North who want to lecture Africans about the management of their wildlife. This can also be seen in the current UK campaigns to ban the import of hunting trophies, which are often portrayed as a measure to enhance conservation — despite overwhelming evidence that such a ban would probably undermine conservation.
“This polarisation and the vociferous anti-trade campaigns have ensured that successive southern African proposals to allow a legal regulated trade have consistently been voted down without getting near the two-thirds majority of CITES voting members to effect a change in the trade regime,” Somerville writes.
“This absolute obstacle to reversing the ban has often led South Africa and other states to refrain from putting forward further proposals for trade.”
Somerville, in his last book, has brought the clarity of his decades of research and writing to this thorny issue in his typically clinical and forthright manner.
RIP Keith Somerville — a baobab has fallen. DM
Africa’s Threatened Rhinos: A History of Exploitation and Conservation by Keith Somerville is published by Pelagic Publishing.
2025-02-18T05:10:16Z
