Pubdate: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) Copyright: 2003 Richmond Newspapers Inc. Contact: http://www.timesdispatch.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365 Author: Barton Hinkle Times-Dispatch Columnist Saving Species: WHAT DO COKE AND RHINOS HAVE IN COMMON? MUCH BUT NOT ENOUGH If you want to buy a kilo of cocaine, it will cost you about $30,000. If you want to buy a kilo of rhinoceros horn - for medicine, carving, or a dagger handle - it will cost you about $40,000. Despite the best efforts of several gov- ernments, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the multi-agency Special Operations Division, and the Department of Justice - not to mention the United States' contribution of $756 million to Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and the Andean region for counter-drug efforts such as illicit-crop reduction and crop eradication - the coca leaf continues to flourish. (Indeed, Americans consume about 250 metric tons of cocaine annually.) Despite the best efforts of several governments - as well as numerous environmental and animal-welfare organizations - to protect endangered species, the number of rhinos has dwindled from half a million in the 1970s to around 13,000 now. What is wrong with this picture? Here's one possible answer: Drug producers own their crops. Nobody owns rhinos. BUT SUPPOSE they did. Suppose ranchers were allowed to raise rhinos the way ranchers raise cows and the way ranchers raised emus until emu turned out not to be the other white meat. Rhino ranchers would not be pleased about poachers coming along and killing their rhinos, any more than Colombian drug lords are pleased about someone trying to burn their crops, so they would take steps to protect the animals. They would try to preserve the animals' habitat. They would try to find ways to produce more rhinos more quickly. They would hire wild-animal veterinarians and covet every little baby rhino. In short, they would have a strong personal reason for keeping the rhinoceros' genetic line going. The analogy to cocaine is not accidental. Trade in protected species or their body parts is "the most profitable illegal trade after drugs and guns," according to Peter Knights, who heads up Wild Aid. The profit margins are huge: A parrot can be caught for $5 and sold in the U.S. for $500. Some profit margins go as high as 800 percent. There is even some overlap with the drug trade; one report by the World Wildlife Fund cites snakes with bags of drugs inside. Anti-poaching leaders in Tibet have been killed, and anti-poaching teams are sometimes assassination targets. Rhino ranching would accomplish two goals: (1) It would help protect the beasts, as noted above, and (2) it would undercut the illegal rhino-horn trade, because legal sellers do not have to pay their traffickers top dollar to compensate for the risk they undertake. There are practical problems, of course. For instance, rhinos are solitary, territorial animals; ranchers couldn't herd them the way they herd cattle. On the other hand, the International Rhino Foundation (IRF), says it has helped with the recovery of the Black Rhino in Northern Tanzania through the Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary - a large, completely fenced-in habitat patrolled by guards. And according to Tom Dillon, who is director of the species conservation program at the World Wildlife Fund, rhino recovery is going well in South Africa. "Most of the growth has been in the past 15 years, when privatization occurred," he says - although "the value is not from the horn, but from tourism. The value from tourism is so high that people are investing in rhinos rather than stocks. The return is about 15 percent." He adds that the same thing is happening in, of all places, Zimbabwe. "Despite the utter chaos, that is one thing that is successful. The national parks are being devastated [by the land policies of Robert Mugabe] but private conservancies are surviving despite politically backed encroachment." Dillon says rhinos fare better under private owners than corrupt governments. OF COURSE, ownership will not protect endangered species that have little economic value, or that cannot be grown on farms or kept on preserves, or that roam the seas. But it would protect many - such as the caimans, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes prized for their leather; some rare and exotic birds, fish, reptiles, and plants; and leopards, tigers, and bears prized for their pelts or for their alleged medicinal properties. It's often illegal to trade in such flora and fauna, but the problem isn't the trading itself; it's the scarcity. Chickens supply a huge network of trade, but they face no threat of extinction. Trying to protect valuable species by banning trade in them clearly doesn't work - not if a 97-percent decline in the rhino population since the 1970s is any indication. Insanity, it has been said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It's time to try something that seems to work. Nobody cares what happens to things more than the people who own them. If someone slashes your neighbor's tires, you're sympathetic and concerned. If someone slashes your tires, you're mad as a hornet. Countless people are sympathetic to the plight of endangered species and concerned when more of them die. What the world needs is a lot more people with the anger of aggrieved hornets. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake