Private Rhino Owners Association (Proa) chairman Pelham Jones told Daily Maverick in an interview that the association was looking at challenging the policy in court on the grounds that, as affected parties, the input of private rhino owners had been ignored by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE).

“If there is no change in policy, then we may have no options left but to go to court. We are considering litigation on the basis that we, the affected party, have made numerous submissions on numerous gazette notices, and time and again our input was ignored,” Jones said.

He also noted that Proa was not part of the High-Level Panel that crafted and proposed the policy.

Cabinet last week agreed to end the captive breeding of rhinos for commercial purposes and of lions — practices that have stirred controversy, especially in the case of the big cats and the canned lion hunting industry.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Cabinet approves end to captive breeding of lions and rhinos

Lion breeders signalled in January that they were also mulling court action over the policy.

Read more in Daily Maverick: ‘I’m a lion farmer. No one takes my lions’: Breeders threaten court action over industry closure

In the case of rhinos, the DFFE said in a statement last week that the aim was to “… phase out intensive management and captive breeding of rhinoceros for commercial purposes, and enhance wild populations”.

That is interesting because it makes no mention of phasing out captive breeding for conservation purposes — a potential rhino-sized loophole.

On the conservation front, some critics have raised concerns that captive breeding operations or captive breeding organisations (CBOs) might give rise to domestication or render rhinos unsuitable for rewilding. But several conservation scientists and rhino experts endorse the practice as a strategy for conserving the species.

An assessment by The African Rhino Specialist Group (AfRSG) of International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) gave the CBO previously owned by John Hume — host to a population of 2,000 white rhinos — barely a passing grade for conservation value.

But it recognised that its contribution “… to southern white rhino conservation comes through contributing to global numbers and options linked to that”.

CBOs are recognised internationally for their role the conservation of endangered species.

Rhinos in the Eastern Cape. (Photo: David Silverman / Getty Images)

And the NGO African Parks bought Hume’s CBO last year with the specific intention of rewilding the animals, which effectively means transferring wildlife populations to ranges the species previously occupied.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Hume’s herd of 2,000 African rhinos get a last-minute ‘lifeline’ in major purchase and rewilding project

That means the CBO has no commercial purpose, but African Parks stated objective is to phase it out through rewilding projects.

Proa’s Jones told Daily Maverick that there are four registered CBOs for rhino breeding in South Africa that account for about 3,000 of the animals, or close to 25% of a national herd whose numbers have been plunging in the face of the poaching onslaught for the pachyderm’s horn which is highly coveted in Asian markets.

Proa estimates that about 8,000 white rhinos in total, or 65% of the national herd, is in private hands as the poaching crisis pivots to KZN’s state-run parks.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Two out of three SA white rhinos now in private hands while poachers decimate KZN herds

This private percentage has been growing steadily over the past two decades for the simple fact that private owners have done a better job of protecting their herds than the ones that occupy state-run reserves, despite swelling security and other costs.

Private game farms lost 93 of the pachyderms last year to poaching — less than 20% of the poaching total despite accounting for 65% of the population.

The ongoing slaughter on state reserves clearly makes the stated policy of “enhancing wild populations” problematic.

Against this backdrop, commercial incentives to privately own the animals are dwindling as fewer private game operators want to buy rhino while the global trade in rhino horn — which can be harvested through non-lethal methods and grows back — remains strictly banned.

The government has not shut the door completely on the reopening of the horn trade, but only for “conservation purposes”, with the commodity exclusively sourced from “wild” populations and only when “conditions become favourable”.

“South Africa will work with range states and potential destination countries (for rewilded South African rhinos) to support a proposal for international commercial trade in rhinoceros horn from protected wild rhinoceros, for conservation purposes, when conditions become favourable,” the DFFE statement said.

This would presumably mean de-horning “wild” populations — an anti-poaching measure — and selling the harvested horns to raise conservation funds.

It does raise questions about what counts as a “wild” rhino. Are rhinos on a large private reserve that are not intensively managed or classified as a CBO not wild?

One thing is certain: if the cabinet-approved policy of phasing out rhino CBOs is challenged by Proa in court, many issues will be examined and the stakes will be high. DM