S.Africa: World’s largest rhino farm to go on sale

The owner of a huge South African rhino conservation farm, the world’s largest, indicated Monday it would be sold at auction in April because he could no longer afford to breed the endangered animals, reports say.

“Breeding rhinos is an expensive game,” John Hume, Platinum’s 81-year-old founder, told AFP, adding that he had been breeding rhinos “for 30 years without profit”.

Platinum Rhino farm is home to nearly 2,000 southern white rhinoceros and spreads across 8,500 hectares (21,000 acres) in the North West province. It is the largest farm for rhino in the world.

The rainbow country is home to about 80 percent of the world’s rhino population, but poaching has taken a huge toll despite increased protection efforts on both private reserves and at national and regional parks.

Per government data, 448 rhinos were killed across the country last year, just three fewer than in 2021, as poachers increasingly targeted privately owned reserves instead of national parks.

The rhino’s horns consist mainly of hard keratin, the same substance found in human nails, but they are highly sought on black markets for use in traditional medicines in Asian countries such as China and Vietnam, where it is believed to cure cancer and other ailments.

“Preventing poaching took a huge monetary toll,” said Hume, adding that it cost him up to half a million rand ($28,000) to breed a rhino up to the age of four years at his farm, which employs around 100 people.

Last year, Hume announced plans to release 100 farm-bred rhinos into the wild each year, which the farm’s chief veterinarian, Dr Michelle Otto, said “could repopulate the whole of Africa” if there were sufficient funding for the project.

Platinum Rhino is home to over 16 percent of South Africa’s southern white rhino population according to the company, the subspecies of white rhino, is now considered endangered with about 20,000 individuals remaining, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).