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“The corruption can be disheartening”: Brent Stirton’s horn trade truths

An anti-poaching team permanently guards a Northern White Rhino, who has had its horn partially cut off. With only eight remaining, it is one of the most endangered species in the world.
A Northern White Rhino in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya, 13 July 2011 – an anti-poaching team permanently guards it. With only eight remaining, it is one of the most endangered species in the world. There are four in this conservancy. Shot on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM lens. © Brent Stirton

The carcass of a black rhino, dead for 24 hours, lies slumped in the mud. Its magnificent horn has been hacked off by poachers exposing the pink tissue beneath. Memorial to a Species, Brent Stirton’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 winning image, shot in Hluhluwe–Imfolozi Park, South Africa, is devastating in its simplicity. But there’s nothing simple about the story behind it.

There are fewer than 30,000 rhinos left in the world, the majority of them in South Africa. Working on a special investigation for National Geographic with journalist Bryan Christy, Brent discovered a rotten trade with few winners, many losers and corruption on a global scale.

Brent’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 award-winning photograph shows a dead Black Rhino bull, stripped of its horn. It was shot twice before its horn was hacked off.
Brent’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 award-winning photograph. Taken on 17 May 2016 at the Hluhluwe–Imfolozi Park, South Africa, it shows a dead Black Rhino bull, poached for its horn less than 24 hours earlier. This Black Rhino, of which there are less than 3,000 left in the world, was shot twice before its horn was hacked off. Shot on a Canon EOS-1D X with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens. © Brent Stirton

This was not a new topic for Brent. He first worked on the rhino horn trade in 2011, also for National Geographic. During this project he focussed on the horn demand in China and Vietnam, documenting purveyors of traditional medicine and their clients. Rhino horn has been used in these countries for 2,000 years to treat a wide range of ailments, despite lack of scientific evidence that it has any benefit. And in recent times, fuelled by growing economic prosperity, the market has grown rapidly. Five years on from this first assignment, with rhino horn now worth more than gold, and a clamour for legalisation of the trade among South African rhino breeders, Brent and Bryan revisited the story.

Shot over six months on and off, mainly in South Africa and Mozambique, the wide-ranging, hard-hitting Rhino Wars introduces all of the main players. We meet impoverished poachers, the ranchers vulnerable to bribes, the police struggling to gather intelligence and arrest the poachers, dedicated non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and vets pioneering new treatments to rehabilitate rhinos that have survived dehorning, as well as the key figures pushing for legalisation.

A rhino poacher who was known to arrange weapons and transport for rhino poachers is detained by park rangers. He was arrested due to information given by the International Anti-Poaching Foundation, which, according to Brent, is “the only effective anti-poaching group on the ground in Mozambique.”
Moses Chauque, a rhino poacher who is known to arrange weapons and transport for rhino poachers, is detained by park rangers in Sábiè Game Park, Mozambique, on the evening of 9 April 2016. He was finally arrested due to information given by the International Anti-Poaching Foundation, according to Brent, “the only effective anti-poaching group on the ground in Mozambique.” Shot on a Canon EOS-1D X with a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM lens. © Brent Stirton

One of these is John Hume, a businessman who made his fortune in timeshares and is now the world’s largest rhino breeder, with 1,400 rhinos on his ranch. He pays $200,000 dollars a month in security to protect them from poachers. Hume’s resident vet oversees legal trimming of the horns. If at least 110mm is left, the tissue at the base remains intact and the horn will grow back. He is rumoured to have horn worth $40 million on the Asian market. Although Brent wouldn’t describe him as a “bad person”, he recognises that he has vested interests: “I don’t think the future of the species should rest on the motivations of one man.” Another rhino farmer, Dawie Groenewald, faces multiple criminal charges for illegal rhino hunts and would, if rhino horn were legalised, be set to profit greatly.

I’m not an idealist, I’m just responding to what I see.

Both men were open to meeting Brent and Bryan, seeing it as an opportunity to put their argument across – but it’s an argument that Brent doesn’t buy. “Until you can show me a mechanism that is corruption-free and doesn’t have loopholes that can be exploited, then I’m going to be sceptical – not because I’m an idealist or a tree-hugger, I’m just responding to what I see out there.” He suggests that a more effective approach to combating the horn trade is to educate the Asian market that’s generating the demand.

Vietnam and China are the two biggest black market destinations for rhino horn because the protein-based material is still thought to have medicinal qualities. “There is no medical value [in horn],” says Brent. “It’s keratin, a mild alkaline. There’s a group of people who are marketing this to a naive audience. If you have a really sick child, you’ve run out of options, and nothing is working and someone says, ‘try some rhino horn’, you spend all the money you have, you mortgage your house, you do whatever you have to do to get this product for your child. Your child takes it, nothing happens. What kind of person does that sort of marketing?”

Hope the rhino is shown undergoing one of the five surgical operations to treat her wound. Hope recovered enough to start growing another horn, but died from a bacterial infection in late 2016.
Brent took this shot of Hope on 2 April 2016, when she was undergoing one of the five surgical operations to treat her wound. The procedures used human abdominal surgery techniques to close the wound without tearing the skin. Hope recovered enough to start growing another horn, but died from a bacterial infection in late 2016. Shot on a Canon EOS-1D X with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens. © Brent Stirton

The biggest challenge in making Rhino Wars was getting to the bottom of this complex story. When it came to documenting the work of the NGOs, Brent’s research was thorough. “A huge amount of money’s gone into animal conservation in South Africa and not all of it to good places, so you have to be very discerning about who you spend time with,” he says. “A lot of photographers work slowly on their stories. I don’t do that – I tend to be busy so there’s a bit of pressure,” says Brent. Once he’d done the hard behind-the-scenes work of building relationships, figuring out what was happening, “the photography was the easy part”, he says. “I’m a journalist first, a photographer second. I have to turn those facts into pictures that speak to the issue.”

A two-man security team on anti-poaching duties in the world’s largest rhino breeding ranch, Buffalo Dream Ranch, is deployed by a helicopter.
Buffalo Dream Ranch, South Africa, 24 May 2016: A two-man security team on anti-poaching duties in the world’s largest rhino breeding ranch. John Hume’s ranch houses around 1,400 rhinos. He is a proponent of legalising the rhino horn trade by using humane dehorning, though “critics state that legalising the horn trade would create loopholes within an already corrupt system, and exacerbate the killing of rhino,” says Brent. Shot on a Canon EOS-1D X with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens. © Brent Stirton

Ninety-percent of the shots were taken with the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, for portraits he used the EOS 5DS R. “I want the 5DS R for the detail and for the three-dimensionality that it brings to pictures. In the bush I don’t always have places to charge my gear and it can be tough on the camera. The 1D X II is a tank, and also good in low light, so that’s helpful for me. I shoot with Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lenses. Occasionally, I use a longer lens, but I like to stand close to what I’m photographing.”

A rhino is captured to be moved for relocation to the more secure facility in the Ezulu Game Reserve, South Africa. The rhinos travelled 20 hours to their new location, sedated every three hours.
A rhino is captured on 15 May 2016 and sent to Ezulu, a South African Hunting reserve where it will continue to live in legal poaching grounds. The rhinos travelled 20 hours to its new location, sedated every three hours. Shot on a Canon EOS-1D X with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens. © Brent Stirton

Yet, paradoxically, it’s Brent’s ability to step back and look at the situation from all angles that gives these pictures their depth. “This isn’t about poaching – it’s more than that,” he says. “Traders come up to a junior ranger or a junior guy in the park and offer them 10,000 Rand, which is the equivalent of four- to six-months’ salary, to tell them where the rhinos are. Then you have [villagers from Mozambique], one of the poorest countries in the world, living right next to Kruger National Park, which is the largest repository for rhino in the world. It’s a perfect storm.”

There’s no easy fix: “The problem is that it goes all the way to the top – the corruption can be disheartening but there are good people who care about these animals. My job is to support them,” he says. And there’s no time to waste. “We’re entering a stage where our wildlife heritage will shrink so we’ll be able to put a fence around it. And then there won’t be wildlife as we know it – wildlife in a wild state. It’s a leadership issue. Either we put people at the top who care enough and are powerful enough to do something about it, or it will continue to happen.”

Written by Rachel Segal Hamilton


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