Rhino breeders are planning to sell 500kg rhino horns in the first legal online auction in South Africa!

The international trading of rhino horns was banned when the CITES Agreement entered into force on 1st of July 1975, and since then trading of the horns have been illegal in most countries across the globe. Despite this, rhinos are constantly poached for their horns, which can fetch somewhere in the range of $50,000 per kilogram on the black market! This high value adds rhinos to the most profitable animals to poach, just under the elephants with their ivory tusks, and the rhino populations have been having big problems because of this.

South Africa recently legalized the sale of rhino horns, even when sold to international buyers. This does not allow for poaching of horns, but allows breeders to keep rhinos for their horns. The breeders are allowed to sell the horns to anyone in South Africa, even non-African people, but the CITES Agreement still prevents anyone from exporting it outside of the country.

A pair of rhino horns. Image by Flickr user ukhomeoffice, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Why did South Africa lift the ban on rhino horn?

During last year’s CITES meeting conservationists clashed with rhino breeder lobbyists when it came to the discussion of if they should keep the ban on rhino horns in place. The breeders argued that the best way to stop illegal poaching of rhinos is to flood the market with horns, making the supply get higher than the demand. This “basic economics” theory argued that the value on rhino horns would fall, and poaching rhinos would be unprofitable. The “basic economics” sounds right, but this has actually been attempted with the ivory industry, where it turned out to be a complete failure, and in fact only increased the demand!

Despite this, the breeder’s lobbyists won the argument, and South Africa opened up for the trade of rhino horns within its own borders.

On August 21, the world’s largest rhino breeder will sell a big part of his huge rhino horn stockpile with an online auction. No one really knows the value of the rhino horns on the legal market, but many people think the 500kg horns that are for sale could bring in a lot more than the $25 million they would be worth on the black market.

No one really knows how the international buyers will get their legally purchased horns back to their own country, but some countries could potentially allow it seeing as it is legally bought from farm animals. Alternatively they will either have to keep the horns in South Africa – or smuggle them home to their own country!

I am personally against the sale of any rhino horn, from any rhino species, even if they have been captive bred. I think we need to realize that these horns are only useful to the animal that owns it, and stop trying to use these things to cure diseases. What is your opinion on this matter? Please share your opinion in the comment field below!