The South Africa – Viet Nam Rhino Horn Trade Nexus (PDF ... - WWF

SiTuATion AT THE SouRCE: SouTH AfRiCA
Estimated value (uSD)
6 000 000
5 000 000
4 000 000
3 000 000
2 000 000
1 000 000
0
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Figure 15 Estimated annual value of Vietnamese White Rhino trophy hunts in South Africa, 2003-10.
hunters wishing to take home a typical White Rhino bull trophy (T. Carroll, pers. comm., 2012). As will
be seen, however, the prospect of windfall profits also produced a corrupting criminal effect on a number
of private sector game industry operators.
It would appear that escalating prices for rhino trophies in South Africa apparently have been of little
concern to Vietnamese hunters who were seeking to acquire horns for commercial trade transactions in
Asia, suggesting that demand for rhino horn in Viet Nam is price inelastic. It is widely believed that the
high prices paid to hunt White Rhinos were subsequently recovered through selling rhino horn on to
illegal markets at home. Assuming exports of rhino trophies represented two horns each time, and
assuming that only one-third of the hunts that occurred in South Africa actually sought official export
permits to move the acquired trophies out of the country legally (Milliken et al., 2009b), it is estimated
that Vietnamese hunters paid over USD22 million to hunt rhinos in South Africa between 2003 and
2010 (Figure 15).
Although Vietnamese hunting of White Rhinos effectively surged from 2006 onwards, doubts about
rhino sport hunting by Vietnamese nationals began emerging earlier. Law enforcement officers in
South Africa report hearing repeated stories of so-called Vietnamese “trophy hunters” having to be
instructed how to shoot a gun in the midst of a sport hunting event or, in a number of instances, the
attendant professional hunters actually having to shoot the animal in question without any participation
of the so-called hunting client. One published account provides a clear description of how certain
professional hunters were complicit in the subversion of the principles of “fair chase”:
Even [name of a prominent professional hunter] has been prosecuted for leading hunts feeding the horn
trade. In 2006 at the Loskop Dam Nature Game Reserve, he paid a token fine after his Vietnamese hunter
casually told an official that he did not know how to shoot. The second time, in Limpopo province in
2008, [he] was indignant and fought the citation in court with the help of lawyer. The judge dismissed the
case, calling it a technicality that the client had not actually fired the fatal bullet, a privilege that may
have gone to [his] teenage son. “We hunted a few,” [he] says, “and the Game Dept. was present on nearly
all of the hunts.” Although he defends the practice, he says he stopped guiding the Vietnamese after the
Game Dept. informed him they were involved in the horn trade (Borrell, 2010).
In another case, a Mossel Bay professional hunter and taxidermist, Christaan Frederik van Wyk, was
ordered to pay a fine of ZAR30 000 (approximately USD4250) for illegally shooting a White Rhino on a
hunting expedition in April 2006 (Rademeyer, 2011b). This case was reported in the press as follows:
His conviction related to a hunting trip on April 27 2006 at the Leshoka Thabang Game Lodge in
Roedtan in Limpopo, in which Van Wyk and a Vietnamese client, Nguyen Tien Hoang, were involved.
Van Wyk organised the hunting trip through Tienie Bamberger, a professional hunter and the owner of
Warthog Safaris in Ellisras, and was introduced to his Vietnamese client in Naboomspruit. Bamberger
received permission for the hunting trip from the owner of Leshoka Thabang, Johan van Zyl. Bamberger
was not present on the day of the hunting trip and his wife, Ananya, and his father accompanied Van
Wyk and Nguyen. When they found the rhino, the Vietnamese man walked away. Bamberger’s wife, her
father-in-law and Van Wyk shot four times at the rhino from a distance of between 50 m and 100 m.
Van Wyk didn’t have a permit to hunt the rhino and was also not registered in Limpopo as a professional
hunter (Rademeyer, 2011b).
Other reported allegations concerned professional hunters allowing individuals who were not on the
hunting permit to shoot the rhinos, or obtaining export permits falsely for clients whose names were not
on the hunting permit. Another issue to emerge was the fact that, in most cases, Vietnamese clients were
not at all interested in having their hunting trophies mounted or otherwise prepared by a taxiderm ist as
is inevitably the case with most bona fide sport hunters. To the contrary, the Vietnamese usually wanted
the horns immediately removed from the dead rhino on the spot and in their possession when they left
the premises of the game ranch they had patronized. And finally, it was apparent the certain game ranches
were repeatedly hosting Vietnamese hunting parties on multiple occasions.
In fact, as early as 2009, PHASA, through its President at the time, was proactively warning its members
to desist from sport hunting with Vietnamese clients:
In light of the evidence and the questionable legality of the end use of certain rhino horns hunted in
South Africa, PHASA strongly advises it’s [sic] members not to book and conduct hunts with nationals
from Viet Nam or other Far Eastern countries until government “has removed this abuse from the SA
legal system”, which it has undertaken to do in the near future. PHASA members with a long-term interest
in South African hunting and conservation are strongly urged to heed this advisory (Butland, 2009).
Furthermore, within law enforcement circles at the time it was widely believed that at least five groups
of Vietnamese nationals were actively sourcing rhino hunts in the country, often using “non-hunters”
as the front men or, on occasion, women to do the hunting. The orchestrators of these Vietnamese
groups directed successive rhino hunts throughout the country, supplying the finance, setting up hunting
opportunities and recruiting individuals from Asia to play the role of foreign hunters, including
wives and girlfriends who were notably unskilled in the use of firearms. Nature conservation officials
were also implicated in this practice as they would remain “on standby” to be present for the hunt,
measure the horn once it was removed, microchip it and enter the details in a register regardless of who
fired the actual shot (Rademayer, 2011c). In early 2011, this “pseudo-hunting” of White Rhinos was
shown to be linked to sex workers who had been trafficked to South Africa, where they were working
illegally to try to pay off their debts. Investigators in South Africa exposed an international wildlife trafficking
syndicate who hired Thai prostitutes and strippers from clubs in Pretoria and Midrand to pose
as “hunters” in sham rhino trophy hunts as a cheaper alternative to bringing faux hunters in from Asia
(Rademeyer, 2011c). A curious increase in the number of rhino hunters from the Czech Republic in
North West Province, a total of over 34 hunts since July 2009, has led to suspicions that they are now
hunting on behalf of Asian crime syndicates (Cull and Stander, 2012).
Such syndicate members were duly aided by unscrupulous professional hunters and White Rhino
property owners who were primarily interested in making large profits rather than promoting adherence
to hunting ethics and conservation principles. Worryingly, some Vietnamese nationals who had
previously been implicated in criminal rhino horn transactions continued to undertake multiple
White Rhino hunts, for which export permits were duly issued. Some of these operatives used business
or residential addresses in South Africa, including the Free State, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal
and Gauteng provinces.
In the face of growing evidence of abuse and criminality, the legal trade in sport hunted rhino horns to
Viet Nam clearly posed a serious and direct challenge to South Africa’s hunting and trade policy for rhinos.
The annotation to the CITES Appendix II listing of White Rhino C. simum in South Africa only allowed for
the conditional export of live animals and hunting trophies with all other specimens of the species to be
treated as if they were included in Appendix I of the Convention. Until the advent of Vietnamese hunters
into the trade, there had never been any particular reason to question that the purpose of rhino horn
exported subsequent to a legitimate hunting operation was anything but a “hunting trophy”. Indeed,
according to UNEP-WCMC data, such trophies have been legally imported by 55 countries or territories
around the world since 2000.
54 the south africa – viet nam rhino horn trade nexus TRAFFIC 55