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.