Black Rhino Hunting Auction

If these are multimillionaires and they want to help rhinos, they can give their money to help rhinos. They don't need to accompany their cash transfer with a high caliber bullet.....

Quite.....

I hate these twisted arguments......there is no need to cull black rhinos at all, they can be translocated if the population is too high. This is very expensive yes, but it seems that money is no object here.

If you really care about preserving wildlife and threatened environments/ ecosystems (more important in many ways that individual species)....then put your mONEY where your mouth is, NOT YOUR GUN!

Give all the money to the conservation group......money you would use for airfares, for accomodation, for equipment, for transporting the carcass back to the US. Better still, buy the permit and then don't kill the rhino to prevent others from using it.
 
A green-hunting is a possible solution.
Or buying for the same price a dead rhino from zoo/safari park (with a tag) and saving it from being destroyed. It's much easier to mount a fresh, non-salted hide, and cheaper to transport the animal itself.
 
Newzooboy said:
If these are multimillionaires and they want to help rhinos, they can give their money to help rhinos. They don't need to accompany their cash transfer with a high caliber bullet.....

Quite.....

I hate these twisted arguments......there is no need to cull black rhinos at all, they can be translocated if the population is too high. This is very expensive yes, but it seems that money is no object here.

If you really care about preserving wildlife and threatened environments/ ecosystems (more important in many ways that individual species)....then put your mONEY where your mouth is, NOT YOUR GUN!

Give all the money to the conservation group......money you would use for airfares, for accomodation, for equipment, for transporting the carcass back to the US. Better still, buy the permit and then don't kill the rhino to prevent others from using it.
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There are no problems with the "endangered" whitetail deer here in Alabama. See the example with Botswana and Elephants, the White Rhino in South Africa etc. You can have opinions but you can't make your own facts. You create a legal, controlled, economically viable open market it for the most part not only gets rid of black markets but the locals have some employment, an incentive to protect the animals etc.
 
Not even in the United States are species listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, one step below extinction, allowed to be hunted.

Yes, hunting economic models and wildlife conservation management have been successful with many species, including the ones mentioned by tschandler71 (except for the white rhinoceros) - but none of them are critically endangered.

A better model would be using funds from hunting permits of, for example, springbok and gemsbok in Namibia towards rhinoceros conservation. This is a model that is widely used in the U.S. where financial resources from game species permits are used to research and preserve endangered and non-game wildlife.

Now, Namibia has, arguably, one of the best wildlife management programs on the continent. Their rhino hunting permits are very limited and individual rhinos are chosen in consideration of their age and known reproductive success. However, with recent massive increases in poaching, regulated hunting of rhinos will become less ethical everyday. South Africa is looking at loosing 5% of its entire rhino population this year. The U.S. has already increased import regulations and protection of white rhinoceros because of the poaching crisis. This is a lot more serious than a healthy debate on hunting & conservation economics - rhinos are beyond this point at the moment. Maybe in the future it can be discussed, but not at this time.
 
I agree where numbers are as low as they are with Black Rhinos hunting them would be counter productive but instead of keeping so many in sometimes substandard zoo exhibits would anyone be opposed to say a semi-wild population somewhere in West Texas? That was like hunted say 30 years from now when it is self sustaining? You can't tell me had they done that with the Western Black Rhino/Northern White in the 70s that it wouldn't be better than what we have now. It worked with the Scimitar Oryx. They have already proven White Rhino breed well in the Western United States when given ample space (Fossil Rim and San Diego). Would the stigma of a privately owned/managed herd be that big of a deal? What if Fossil Rim went into it?

I am 26 years years old, when I am an older gentleman I would rather see White and Black rhino hunted and managed in west texas than the history books. The lack of rule of law in most parts of Africa directly related to the to early imo end of Colonization has been the doom of the large mammal in Africa. The "African Liberation" movements of the past 60 years lack of rule of law and capitalism have only accelerated the tragedy of the commons.
 
I would recommend everyone reading up quite a bit on black rhinoceros and African wildlife management. There is a lot about Africa and rhinos that most people don't understand. Very little information about Africa is found in the mainstream, and you need to dig for it if you want to get to know the truth.

First rhinos:
- Southern Black Rhinoceros and Southern White Rhinos are being managed on select Texas ranches. And have been since late 1980s/early 1990s. Its been 20 years and neither have shown much success.

-Its important to understand that black rhinoceros and white rhinoceros are very different species. They have different social structures, they eat different things, and have different dispositions.

-A zoo isn't likely to start selling animal products, even to raise money for conservation. I think peacock feathers and ostrich eggs are the limit.

On to Africa:
-Yes the current political situation stems from the end of colonial states and the arbitrary creation of current countries. However their wildlife is only partially affected by this. African wildlife's greatest threat is not African peoples, but foreign peoples.

-Exploitation of the continent by foreign countries drives most of the wildlife issues. Asia has decimated its wildlife population and is now seeking wildlife products from Africa and North America. Europe's fisheries have collapsed and the industry is importing fish from the West African coast. Industry looking for raw materials (oil, coltan, diamonds, gold) have destroyed habitat, increased need for bushmeat, and poisoned watersheds.

-African countries should be rich. They have everything that everyone desires - vast resources, beautiful culture, and a paradise of landscapes. The economies of Africa are driven by capitalism. There is just little regulation to stop the corruption and waste. Very few capitalist are providing proper compensation for the resources nor are they investing in African industries - foreigners just want to take the resources back to their local economies.

-So the tragedy of the commons in Africa exists not because African are over-consuming their resources, but because foreigners have over-exploited their own. Africans have been so busy dealing with internal affairs stemming from arbitrary boarders that they have invested less into foreign policy. Which allows foreigners to come in and exploit the resources as long as they assist in keeping government leaders in power.
 
Which stems from the various situations concerning the rule of law/lack of a tradition of private landownership. I don't understand why the British system for the most part "worked" in Canada/Australia/New Zealand/India (and to extent the US but we left the British empire a long time before the colonial system in the bureaucratic sense was established) when it came to establishing democratic traditions and the rule of law yet was rather hit or miss in the African colonies. Not to use an easy explanation but I wonder if the British chose not to development certain institutions because of cultural racism. It could possibly stem from the fact compared to other colonies African ones were established for a relatively short time (Scramble for Africa until the liberation movements was about a century). Add to those facts that during the two World Wars the colonies were basically self sufficient (and after the 2nd none of the European powers were interested in building up the colonies) and that leaves a relatively short time for institutions of any type to develop.

Dutch colonies seem to be the exception to the rule, I wonder if that has to do with the traditions of the Dutch colonies being more trading posts than true colonies allowing local governmental traditions to develop?
 
tschandler71 said:
I would rather see White and Black rhino hunted and managed in west texas than the history books.
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If those are the only two options, then I would agree with you. But I think we still have other options.

However, it would likely take much longer to build the numbers to sustainable levels. Oryx can reproduce at less than 2 years of age and can produce a calf every year. Black rhinos don't breed until they are 5-8 years old and have to wait 2-3 years between calves.

I'm doubt that anyone in it for the money would be willing to wait that long before they started seeing a return on their investment.
 
I agree, I just don't know what the solution is. It seems the rhino sadly isn't going to hang on until stable governments/traditions develop. The key though isn't to condemn capitalism. To paraphrase Hayek, give people a chance to discover the most valuable lesson is to serve one another. To apply that to this and other conservation situations to me means to find a way so the price on an entity in this case a Rhino is more valuable to the locals alive than it is dead. By assigning value you establish good will and incentive in the local populations. Not that is the only way, see the traditions of the Maasai who take great pride in the protection/management of local wildlife. The capitalist and the hunter do not have to be enemies to conservation. Economically viable uses can and should be cultivated to protect wildlife as well.
 
tschandler71 said:
Which stems from the various situations concerning the rule of law/lack of a tradition of private landownership. I don't understand why the British system for the most part "worked" in Canada/Australia/New Zealand/India (and to extent the US but we left the British empire a long time before the colonial system in the bureaucratic sense was established) when it came to establishing democratic traditions and the rule of law yet was rather hit or miss in the African colonies. Not to use an easy explanation but I wonder if the British chose not to development certain institutions because of cultural racism. It could possibly stem from the fact compared to other colonies African ones were established for a relatively short time (Scramble for Africa until the liberation movements was about a century). Add to those facts that during the two World Wars the colonies were basically self sufficient (and after the 2nd none of the European powers were interested in building up the colonies) and that leaves a relatively short time for institutions of any type to develop.

Dutch colonies seem to be the exception to the rule, I wonder if that has to do with the traditions of the Dutch colonies being more trading posts than true colonies allowing local governmental traditions to develop?
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Go read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It will explain in great detail why tropical Africa never developed like the more temperate regions.
 
interesting, like I've often said being a social science teacher I tend to see things through a historical and economic sense. Like the old quote says when you have a hammer everything is a nail haha. I will have to check that book out.
 
tschandler71 said:
I agree, I just don't know what the solution is. It seems the rhino sadly isn't going to hang on until stable governments/traditions develop. The key though isn't to condemn capitalism. To paraphrase Hayek, give people a chance to discover the most valuable lesson is to serve one another. To apply that to this and other conservation situations to me means to find a way so the price on an entity in this case a Rhino is more valuable to the locals alive than it is dead. By assigning value you establish good will and incentive in the local populations. Not that is the only way, see the traditions of the Maasai who take great pride in the protection/management of local wildlife. The capitalist and the hunter do not have to be enemies to conservation. Economically viable uses can and should be cultivated to protect wildlife as well.
Click to expand...

Its not the communities decimating African wildlife. They like their wildlife and know its value. But its when foreigners come in to exploit the resources and offer more money than they have. For rhinos, its hard for communities to protect them when poachers are flying around in helicopters over-dosing rhinos with immobilizing agents to kill them.
 
Again you seem to keep forgetting the whole rule of law part and jumping straight to the demand side of the equation.
 
tschandler71 said:
Which stems from the various situations concerning the rule of law/lack of a tradition of private landownership. I don't understand why the British system for the most part "worked" in Canada/Australia/New Zealand/India (and to extent the US but we left the British empire a long time before the colonial system in the bureaucratic sense was established) when it came to establishing democratic traditions and the rule of law yet was rather hit or miss in the African colonies. Not to use an easy explanation but I wonder if the British chose not to development certain institutions because of cultural racism. It could possibly stem from the fact compared to other colonies African ones were established for a relatively short time (Scramble for Africa until the liberation movements was about a century). Add to those facts that during the two World Wars the colonies were basically self sufficient (and after the 2nd none of the European powers were interested in building up the colonies) and that leaves a relatively short time for institutions of any type to develop.

Dutch colonies seem to be the exception to the rule, I wonder if that has to do with the traditions of the Dutch colonies being more trading posts than true colonies allowing local governmental traditions to develop?
Click to expand...

In America, the setters decimated the natives. Nearly the same in Australia and New Zealand. In India, the people were united through religion and economy before the British invaded. In Africa, after colonization, European powers created nations where they hadn't been before. Arbitrary lines were created and people were forced to govern together when they had long been in opposition to each other. You can't have peace when different cultures are forced to govern each other.
 
tschandler71 said:
Again you seem to keep forgetting the whole rule of law part and jumping straight to the demand side of the equation.
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Because demand is fueling the decrease in rhinos, not lack of regulations. Africa is not some vast lawless land. Yes they have their political problems and corruption, but Africans are not consuming most of the wildlife being poached.
 
"Laws" are pointless without the rule of law. That is the point why exactly did the rule of law not take hold those places like it did the temperate reasons that seems to be the premise of the book J recommended.
 
That's not actually the premise of Jarod Diamond's book, but you'll find out when you read it.

Rule of law doesn't do much either in terms of wildlife trade. There is plenty of both in the U.S. Our country is the largest importer of elephant ivory, and our turtle populations are rapidly decreasing because of their export to Asia. Hopefully something will be done before our turtles will be considered threatened with extinction. Economics will always undermine the "rule of law".
 
Folks

This has gone off at quite a tangent since my last post, and very interesting too.

I would also recommend Edward O. Wilson's 'The Diversity Of Life' to get a sense of the actual scale of the problem.....
 
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