According to the 18-count indictment, from 2005 to 2010, the Groenewald brothers traveled throughout the United States to attend hunting conventions and gun shows where they sold outfitting services and accommodations to American hunters to be conducted at their ranch in Mussina, South Africa. During the time period covered by the indictment, Janneman Groenewald lived in Autauga County, Alabama, where Out of Africa maintained bank accounts and is accused of money laundering and structuring deposits to avoid federal reporting requirements. Hunters paid between $3,500 and $15,000 for the illegal rhino hunts.
The indictment alleges that the defendants then sold the rhino horn on the black market. Eleven illegal hunts are detailed in the papers filed in federal court, including one in which the rhino had to be shot and killed after being repeatedly wounded by a bow, and another in which Dawie Groenewald used a chainsaw to remove the horn from a sedated rhino that had been hunted with a tranquilizer gun. The American hunters have not been charged.
Rhinos could have been sold to hunters
Rhinoceros are an herbivore species of prehistoric origin and one of the largest remaining mega-fauna on earth. Adult rhinoceros have no known natural predators. All species of rhinoceros are protected under United States and international law. Since 1976, trade in rhinoceros horn has been regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty signed by over 170 countries around the world to protect fish, wildlife and plants that are or may become imperiled due to the demands of international markets. Nevertheless, the demand for rhinoceros horn and black market prices have skyrocketed in recent years due to the value that some cultures have placed on ornamental carvings, good luck charms or alleged medicinal purposes, leading to a decimation of the global rhinoceros population. Like hair or finger nails, rhino horn is actually composed of keratin and has no proven medical efficacy. As a result, rhino populations have declined by more than 90 percent since 1970. South Africa, for example, has witnessed a rapid escalation in poaching of live animals, rising from 13 in 2007 to a record 1004 in 2013. Illegally killed rhinos like the ones charged in this prosecution are not included in the published statistics of poached animals.
"I felt like from day one it was something benefiting the black rhino," Knowlton tells Lavandera shortly after the hunt. "Being on this hunt, with the amount of criticism it brought and the amount of praise it brought from both sides, I don't think it could have brought more awareness to the black rhino."
Since trophy hunting was permitted for white rhinos in 1968, the population of Southern white rhinos increased from 1,800 to c. 18,000 in 2018. An increase has also been seen in the number of black rhinos, from 3,500 in 2004 (when the CITES quotas were introduced) to c. 5,500 in 2018.
So, in common with many conservation organisations, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Save the Rhino International recognises that the sustainable use of wildlife, including the responsible trophy hunting of rhinos, has a valid role in overall rhino conservation strategies. For the record, Save the Rhino is not involved with decision-making about quotas or animal selection, and Save the Rhino does not accept donations derived from the sale of rhino trophy hunts, legally sold horns or live sales of rhinos.
Rhinoceroses have been so widely targeted by poachers that conservation groups have placed all five rhino species on their lists of threatened animals worldwide. Rhinoceros populations vary by species, but some have fewer than 100 members, according to the International Rhino Foundation.
Officials from the Humane Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have said that while culling can be appropriate in abundant animal populations, all black rhinos should be protected, given their endangered status.
Poachers long have targeted all species of rhino, primarily for its horn, which is valuable on the international black market. Made of the protein keratin, the chief component in fingernails and hooves, the horn has been used in carvings and for medicinal purposes, mostly in Asia. The near-extinction of the species also has been attributed to habitat loss.
Typically, the five Namibian permits that are issued each year are sold to local hunt operators, which then book clients from around the world. Those permits have typically gone for a few hundred thousand dollars.
In recent years, however, Americans have not been able to import black rhino trophies into the U.S., which has limited the interest from that country, reported the DSC. But the Fish and Wildlife Service is set to grant an exemption in this case, as part of a deal that Namibians will hope will also bring in a higher price for the permit, explained Nelson Freeman, a spokesperson for Safari Club International.
Black rhinos have declined precipitously in recent decades. The trend is driven by habitat loss and poaching for their horns, used in traditional Asian medicine, despite the fact that Western scientists say they have no real therapeutic value.
Namibia has recently earned high marks from environmentalists for trying to protect its remaining rhinos. The country supports some of that work by auctioning off up to five permits a year for trophy hunts of select individual rhinos. Most permits have been sold locally; the Dallas auction last January marked the first time that a sale happened in the U.S.
Carter says that Namibian game managers have selected older male black rhinos as targets because they are no longer breeding and can limit the growth of the local population. That's because they continue to assert dominance by preventing younger males from breeding with females, meaning fewer rhino babies.
But Flocken says there are problems with it. "No one knows when adult male rhinos stop being reproductively viable because there have been no scientific studies on it," he says. If game managers want to increase genetic diversity by allowing younger males to breed, he says, they should move "problem" rhinos.
Wardens do occasionally move rhinos, sometimes from country to country, in a bid to thwart poachers. The process costs about $10,000 per animal, and Flocken notes that 35 rhinos could be moved for the price of the Dallas Safari Club's winning auction bid.
Black rhinos are the smaller of the two African rhino species. The most notable difference between white and black rhinos are their hooked upper lip. This distinguishes them from the white rhino, which has a square lip. Black rhinos are browsers rather than grazers, and their pointed lip helps them feed on leaves from bushes and trees. They have two horns, and occasionally a third, small posterior horn.
Of all the threats facing black rhinos, poaching is the deadliest. Black rhinos have two horns which make them lucrative targets for the illegal trade in rhino horn A wave of poaching for rhino horn rippled through Kenya and Tanzania, continued south through Zambia's Luangwa Valley as far as the Zambezi River, and spread into Zimbabwe. Political instability and wars have greatly hampered rhino conservation work in Africa, notably in Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan. This situation has exacerbated threats such as trade in rhino horn and increased poaching due to poverty.
Over time, habitat loss has led to isolated, high-density rhino populations. These populations have slow growth rates, which can cause numbers to stagnate and eventually decline. They also raise the risk of disease transmission. To ensure a healthy and growing black rhino population, rhinos from high-density areas must be moved to low density areas with suitable habitat. WWF is supporting these efforts and partnering with government agencies and other NGOs to establish new black rhino populations.
Researchers have argued for decades about whether climate change or human hunting had a larger effect on worldwide extinctions of large animals such as woolly rhinos and mammoths as the Pleistocene Ice Age approached its end around 11,700 years ago (SN: 11/13/18).
A deeper look at the factsIt has long been debated whether hunting can be used as a conservation tool, in the same way permits are sold to visit mountain gorillas in the wild. Neither is good for the specific individual animals involved (though of course the gorillas tend to have a rather higher chance of surviving the ordeal), but it results in making the species as a whole, be it gorillas or rhinos, more valuable to the local community, which in turn provides an incentive to protect them. Hunting rhinos and visiting mountain gorillas are opposite ends of this scale but just perhaps, the principle is the same. In 2005, Richard Emslie from the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group (1), wrote:
EmotionsI would argue that a lot, if not all people who do charity work voluntarily or otherwise, will have some level of emotional reason. It could be their life has been touched by cancer in some way and so they run a marathon for Macmillan, or they have a particular fondness for an animal or species and raise money for a relevant animal charity. Whatever the reason, humans are emotional beings but whilst the idea of a rhino being hunted simply horrifies me, is it the wrong thing for me to do for the future of the species, to not be able to look past that emotive response? 2ff7e9595c
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