Rhinos For Sale | Explorer

It's a bit of an irony to be here because, on one hand, it's beautiful, peaceful, and serene, but you're actually at the eye of the storm when it comes to the war on rhinos.

So we go over to always a very, very special part of this particular auction, which is, of course, the rhino. And away we go! 200 now? Now 175.

The economy out here is driven by big game hunting and safari tourism. There are some rare instances of rhino hunting, but mostly tourists just want to take photos and to keep their reserves stocked with rhinos. Ranchers sometimes buy and sell them at auction.

And all done! I think that deserves a big hand. Well done! So you bought a rhino today?

Yeah, I've got the one on the right. It feels weird, right, to distill this majestic beast down into like dollar and cents? But you also can't pretend like we exist in a vacuum where that doesn't have a cost. No, that's the reality.

Yeah, for a variety of reasons, rhinos are really expensive to care for, and outside of tourism, ranchers don't have a good way of making that money back. You're sort of expecting people to put in a huge amount of money, and where's that money coming from?

Um, you've got guys who are storing horn in the hope that it will legalize one day and then hopefully be able to cash in and recover costs. Are you pro legalization?

I am actually, yeah. It's the same as the drug trade. The debate in South Africa right now is whether to give in to the demand for horn, which again is based entirely on a myth, and legalize its trade on the global market.

Pro-legalization ranchers claim that because rhino horn grows back when it's trimmed, it could be a renewable resource. The theory goes, if you flood the market with legal horn, it would drive down the black market price. If you do that, you reduce the incentive to poach and thereby make rhinos a much more attractive animal to keep.

But as the legalization debate is waged in policy arenas right now, ranchers on the ground have a serious poaching problem. To protect their animals, they're tracking down all of the rhinos on their ranches, tranquilizing them, and shearing down their horns to nubs with a chainsaw.

[Applause] Who would take a chainsaw to an animal in their right mind? But it's what we have to do to keep them alive.

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