Petition to the South African Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa

The public has until March 10 to respond to draft regulations by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs which seeks to make widespread sale of rhino horn legal and which would undermine an international CITES ruling.

If the regulations become law, South Africa will become an open market for trading and even exporting rhino horn. This is a slap in the face for the overwhelming majority of countries that voted against the trade in horn at the CITES CoP17 meeting in South Africa last year and a huge victory for the very few, extremely wealthy, rhino farmers who have been lobbying Molewa for years.

The draft regulations seek to justify the trade through the fiction that it may only be traded for personal purposes, but leaves out what ‘personal’ may mean.

What rhino traders will hope for is that the regulations will give the appearance that the trade is under control and non‐commercial, but that once the horns reach (say) Vietnam, everyone will nudge, wink and look the other way. The huge black market value of horn will ensure that uncontrolled cheating will take place.

Lifting the trade ban would not be good news for rhinos because there’s a demonstrable link between the sale of farmed wildlife and poaching. It would serve to stimulate almost limitless Asian
markets through the sale of limited goods which would not take long to bleed into illegal procurement through poaching.

For the future of rhinos on earth, we have to stop these draft regulations becoming law.