BREAKING: Court removes ban on rhino horn trade

BREAKING: Court removes ban on rhino horn trade

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Ilse De Lange

http://citizen.co.za/wp-content/uplo...787.jpg?d580fcA white rhino. Pic: Zululand Observer

Domestic rhino horn trade is now legal.

It will from today be legal to trade in rhino horn in South Africa after the High Court in Pretoria this morning set aside government’s 2009 ban on domestic trade in rhino horn.
Judge Francis Legodi read out his court order in less than five minutes before handing down his 37-page judgment in the application by Malelane game farmer John Hume and Limpopo farmer Johan Kruger.
“The applications by the applicants for the review and setting aside of the moratorium on domestic trade in rhino horns are hereby granted and the moratorium … is hereby reviewed and set aside for substantial non-compliance with consultative and participatory process by the members of sections 99 and 100 of NEMBA (The National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act),” he said.
The Judge said the exact percentage attributable to the moratorium is not known, but clearly its role in adding to the surge in poaching could not be excluded.
“Furthermore the extent of smuggling or illegal export of rhino horns due to lack of implementation of the applicable measures is not known.
“The next question is, on what basis should this court suspend the setting aside of the moratorium?
“Put differently, what disastrous implications would be brought about by the immediate lifting of the moratorium? I cannot think of any.
“The solution appears to lie in the effective implementation of applicable and envisaged measures,” Judge Legodi said.
Hume’s legal representative GF Heyns said he did not want to speculate what the Water and Environmental Affairs Minister planned to do with the ruling and if there would be an appeal, but for now regulated domestic trade in rhino horn was legal.
Hume, who farms in the area south of the Kruger National Park, is the largest rhino farmer in the world, but told the court he could no longer afford to spend R5 million a month to preserve his herd and would be forced to dispose of 1200 rhinos if the ban remained in place.
He maintained the moratorium was directly to blame for a sharp spike in rhino poaching since 2008.
His advocate argued in court that it was a “cold hard fact” that our rhino would be extinct by 2021 under the present government regime.
Kruger’s advocate argued that the moratorium should be set aside as the Minister failed to comply with her obligation to properly notify the public about the proposed ban or to give members of the public a chance to make meaningful submissions.
The Minster conceded that a notice of the proposed ban was never published in a national newspaper, but maintained there was “substantial compliance” through publication in the Government Gazette and news articles in newspapers in the Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The court was told that rhino horn was selling for as much as $65 000 per kilogram.
Only 5 black rhino may be hunted in South Africa per year, but an unlimited number of white rhino may be hunted, although individual hunters may only hunt one white rhino per year, the court was told.
http://www.citizen.co.za/883657/cour...no-horn-trade/