http://www.news24.com/SciTech/...-on-YouTube-20120117

Rhino video goes viral on YouTube
2012-01-17 10:28

Alani Janeke
Cape Town - A South African living in London is protesting the hunting of endangered rhino with a video that has gone viral on YouTube.

Mr Mark Warren, who is known on the internet as Pharside, says he cannot understand why hunters should be allowed to pay enormous amounts of money to hunt rhino, while the animals are becoming more and more endangered.

The video, which makes simple but yet shocking statements, has already reached 266 000 views on YouTube.

Warren also urges those that watch the video to spread the word and create awareness around the issue.

Meanwhile the Private Rhino Owners Association (PROA) says a moratorium on the hunting of rhino will not do anything to solve the poaching problem in SA.

According to Mr Pelham Jones, chairperson of PROA, the legal hunting of rhinos contributes to the survival of the species.

Jones said private rhino owners allow the hunting of their rhino to promote breeding of the animals. He claims that 50% of born rhinos are male and that too many males in the same geographical area van lead to aggression and animals attacking each other.

"This is the reason why it is to advantage of private rhino owners as well as the animals themselves to allow legal hunting," said Jones.

According to Mark's video a kilogram of rhino horn can fetch up to R69 000 on the black market. Jones said the biggest issue with poaching is the fact that a dead rhino's horn is worth more than that of a living rhino. This is the reason he believes trading in rhino horn should be legalised.

Here's the YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ture=player_embedded

I read a paper recently (can't remember where) that explained that despite the seemingly large numbers of poached rhino in recent years, that the sum total of legal and illegal off-take of rhino in SA is still within the conservative allowable off-take (0.5% - 2%??) for maintaining a sustainable population. In other words, despite all the poaching, the rhino population is still growing.

At the rate that Rhino are poached in SA alone (400+ this year) the reproduction rate is lower than the death-rate and after new research the Rhino will be extinct in 2025.
A healthy Rhino cow produces a new calf every 3,5 years and that calf (if female) will start reproducing at the age of +- 6 years.
More than 50% of the poached Rhino in SA was poached in National parks where there is no hunting allowed.

The math explains it all.

Add to that the poachers are politically connected - as evidenced by Out of Africa lot - and there is no home for rhinos.

Poaching will not eradicate the rhino. Pitiful, knee-jerk, sentimentalist policy-making will.

About a third of SA's rhino are privately owned. They are not the greatest crowd pullers in a game reserve scenario (although the recent poaching has helped raise their profile in this respect) So it stands to reason that rhino must be utilised to remain viable in private hands. That means trade, whether in hunting or products. It was the moratorium on this trade of rhino products within SA that spiked the poaching.

Of course, the other side of the coin is the illegal slaughter of rhino by their own owners. This is also loosely called poaching, but it's not strictly speaking so. At a ministers summit on the subject in 2010 the rhino management group indicated that if the RIGHT animals are taken, the white rhino could sustain about 1200 animals per year as an offtake. Given 200 odd legally hunted and 400 odd poached we are about only halfway there, BUT poaching (and the other mentioned illegal slaughter) does not take the right animals. It's un-selective nature is the real risk in the short term.

The rhino is probably still very far from extinction risk. Remember how low numbers were when Dr Ian Player & the Natal Parks Board first rescued the Southern white rhino in the sixties? We are a far cry from that, but only solid support for a consumptive sustainable conservation model will save the beast.

Probably the biggest threat it faces is the not unlikely event of a total societal breakdown in SA in the future, which would result in the kind of chaos which would render the rhino insignificant in the big picture....

Call Jolouburn to the rescue - if she cared for the conservation of the species(generic)this is where she ought to focus her ideals.

Jolouburn and all her friends are only interested in stopping hunting.

All their efforts are desguised as "conservation".

But nothing could be further from the truth.

This is real money going into conservation and the economy.

http://www.krugerpark.co.za/kr...g-hunting-23367.html

About 17 million hectares of privately owned South African land are currently used for wildlife ranching and conservation, and on this land about 200,000 South Africans participate in a favourite recreational activity – ‘biltong’ hunting. For the first time, the contribution these hunters make to the economy has been quantified, and the total tops three billion Rand. This is far more than is spent by overseas hunters searching for the biggest and the best trophy animals.

For many years, South Africa’s professional hunters have kept records on who comes to the country to hunt which animals, and along the way have determined how much money is spent by the overseas clients. However, much less was known about the nation’s recreational hunters until a study conducted last year revealed how and where they spend their money.

The ‘National profile and economic impact of biltong hunters in South Africa 2005’ report is the first in-depth study ever to be conducted on recreational hunting inthe country. Dr Peet van der Merwe and Prof Melville Saayman from the University of the North West at Potchefstroom carried out the research, at the instigation of the South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association (SAHGCA).

The study partly came about to provide information for hunting associations that wished to lobby for changes to the stringent new firearms legislation. Questionnaires were sent out to the 23,000 members of the hunting association, and from the responses the researchers formed a profile of the average biltong hunter and his spending habits.

The typical biltong hunter in South Africa is a well-educated, married Afrikaans man aged between 40 and 64 who drives a Toyota bakkie. Almost 70 percent of the hunters had a post-matric qualification, and almost half earn more than R250,000 per year and are either self-employed, managers or professional people.

The three main reasons given for recreational hunting were for meat/biltong, for leisure/socialising and for trophies. Biltong hunting is clearly a social activity, as more than two-thirds of the people that responded to the survey said that they liked to hunt in a group, normally of four people. Hunters usually venture out into the bush on average three times each year, with less than a fifth hunting only once in the year.

Most of the biltong hunting was carried out in the Limpopo Province (37 percent), followed by the Northern Cape (15 percent) and the North West (14 percent). Of the animals most frequently hunted, springbok top the list, followed by impala, blesbuck, kudu and warthog.

Surprisingly, the top five revenue generating animals are not the same as the most frequently hunted animals, being kudu, blue wildebeest, impala, gemsbok and springbok. Excluding the cost of game, the average hunter spends just over R4,000 each hunting season on accommodation, fuel, food, drinks, ammunition, meat processing and other incidental costs.

According to Theo Venter, a vice president with the SAHGCA, hunters are spending more money these days on ‘gadgets’ for their guns, as the new gun laws make buying new weapons more difficult. Added to this is the cost of the animals that are hunted, which averages out at R11,600.

With an estimated 200,000 biltong hunters in the country, the researchers estimate that the hunters spend R3,120,474,000 each year. In comparison, the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (Phasa) reports that in the 2005 hunting season, some 8,000 clients (including non-hunters) spent about R650 million on daily rates, animals hunted and taxidermy work.

However, several of the country’s major hunting associations recently made a joint presentation to the parliamentary portfolio committee on safety and security, which estimated that the biltong and professional hunting industry combined contributed R7,7 billion to the national economy.

This was when the value of firearm and hunting permits, books, medical, game auctions, infrastructure, vehicles, lodges and tourism, taxidermy, and game translocation were added to the tally. However, the factor that pushed the bottom line into big digits was the cost of the labour that keeps the wheels of the industry turning – this is estimated to top R1.6 billion.

As well as all these direct costs, the value of the 9,000 game farms that have hunting exemption is estimated at R20 billion. With the 2005 benchmark study behind them, Venter says that the SAHGCA will invest in a second study during next year’s hunting season, with a few refinements to the questionnaire. This will allow them to pick up trends, and gain a better picture of the country’s average biltong hunter and his contribution to the economy.

It is the above studies that the likes of the video producer do not read and give an emotional spill about.

If hunting is allowed then poaching reduces farmer looks after his cash cow.

Further study done.

http://www.kznhunters.co.za/do...HUNTERS%20REPORT.pdf

quote:

He claims that 50% of born rhinos are male and that too many males in the same geographical area van lead to aggression and animals attacking each other.

Not a very controversial "claim" in my book anyway....

quote:

Call Jolouburn to the rescue - if she cared for the conservation of the species(generic)this is where she ought to focus her ideals.

I care and i do support and help as best i can several rhino charities and organisations.
I however recognise in this case that poaching is the major factor in the rhino decline and whilst rhino horn is more valuable when the rhino is dead than alive things will not change.