Private rhino owners want trade legalised Todays News - 12 Tue, Aug 2014 The majority of private rhino owners support legal trade in rhino horn, says Pelham Jones, Chairperson of Private Rhino Owners Association (PROA), who addressed the SATSA conference in Stellenbosch on Friday. Jones pointed to a PROA survey of rhino owners. The survey, which was conducted among 380 privately owned reserves, had a response rate of 32%. As many as 97% of the respondents were in a support legal trade in rhino horn. Furthermore, 47% of respondent were confident that they would continue to keep rhino in the future, while 53% were uncertain, or already considering selling their rhino. Jones was putting forward the argument in favour of legalised trade as part of a debate at the conference (for more on the debate, look out for the September issue of the Tourism Update Digi Mag). According to Jones, private rhino owners own 2.2 million hectares of land on which rhino roam, roughly the equivalent to the Kruger National Park. This land is spread of roughly 380 reserves which are dotted across the country, said Jones. However, Jones emphasised that private owners did not have the resources to protect rhinos from the onslaught of poaching. He pointed to increased security costs to counter the threat of poaching. He said as a result, many private reserves had gone from profitable to loss making over the past few years. Jones added that the private sector did not have access to donor funding or the state. “We are fighting this battle on our own,” he said. Todays News Tessa Reed
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 05:36:31 +0000
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