So yesterday I learned that a rhino hunting permit costs R100! Unbelievable! No wonder we have a problem!

OK, so there is a “species fee”, although the department was vague about what this was, saying only it differed from province to province. SA generated R49-million in trophy fees from 107 legitimate rhino hunts in 2009.

To be honest, I am disappointed we allow hunting at all, given the situation. We’ve lost almost 200 rhino to poaching this year. I’m with the DA’s Gareth Morgan in thinking that we might call a moratorium until we get our house in order.

The bit about a permit costing R100 came from the Department of Environmental Affairs as one answer among several, to questions I asked days ago. I was so gobsmacked I phoned the department’s spokesman to query it. It came like this: “A hunting permit in terms of (legislation) …costs R100.oo” I thought perhaps that point was supposed to be a comma, and was supposed to be one step towards the right, viz: R10,000″.

No, the spokesman said, it’s R100. Unless I am sorely mistaken, there was not one iota of concern in his voice. There was no attempt to palliate the news, no mention that legitimate hunters still have to pay for their safari and for a professional hunter to accompany them. A quick look at a few hunting sites shows a professional hunter’s rate from EUR175 to EUR350 per day and that rhino, lion and elephant hunts are usually POR (price on request), but a buffalo bull can cost the hunter $15900. It’s not small change.

For one thing, if permits cost more than R100 – I’d say for rhino R10000 wasn’t to high – it might concentrate the minds of those rubber stamping the things. One of my Twitter followers said it well: “I think that not only DEAT but all conservation structures in SA are so dysfunctional they’ve lost touch with reality”. (I am not going to say who he is as it was a direct Tweet).

The department could only say that the “species fee” provincial authorities charge “seems to be directed to conservation”. Seems? Am I missing something here?

I am well persuaded by the IUCN’s Richard Emslie and others that hunting has played an “extremely important” role in rhino conservation, bringing in revenue, stimulating breeding and encouraging landowners to acquire more land on which rhino can roam, not all for the hunt.

There are also various ways to hunt, and let’s not forget there are people who “green hunt”, using darts. You don’t have to take home a trophy.

I understand that to some hunting is …um, great sport. Tracking a dangerous beast, lining up a shot … but I can’t empathise. The only hunting I have ever done is with a camera. I don’t think I’d want to point even a dart gun at something as endangered as the rhino (OK, so the white rhino is not strictly endangered, yet, because we still have good numbers of them, but it is endangered in that it is actively hunted).

It’s silly, but the other day I was stunned to read (thanks BBC) that a rhino horn had been stolen from a museum on the High Street in Ipswitch, UK. Somehow that depicted the utter desperation of those who care not one bit for our rhino. They just want the horn to sell to those nitwits who think its a cure for things like cancer.

Look, I am not against proper professional hunting. One man’s hunt is anathema to another. That’s fine. If SA can make money out of hunting tourism that is properly organised, that’s fine with me. But our Treasury does not like ringfencing the funds it rakes in from all of us. That has been one of the most convincing arguments against the carbon tax. Revenue gleaned from hunting permits should be ringfenced for conservation at the least, rhino conservation at most.

And, for goodness sake, charge more than R100 for a permit!

Tags: conservation, hunting, poaching, rhino