Rhino conservation in a time of crisis

Curtis Segarra: Who doesn’t love to travel? What’s better than exploring the world and seeing the sights? Maybe doing so while actually helping improve the world! That’s the lofty goal of ecotourism. It’s a more responsible way to travel,” according to the International Ecotourism Society. It’s centered on environmental conservation, education and sustaining local communities. So, when ecotourism is done well, it’s a way to travel that helps support communities and protect nature. Sign me up!

This is Distanced, Scienceline’s Special Project about how different communities are responding to the coronavirus pandemic. In this episode we’ll be taking a trip into the world of ecotourism and African rhino conservation. — So sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.

(Jet sounds)

(Record scratch)

Curtis Segarra:: Wait a minute –– as you know, coronavirus has made travel nearly impossible. Last year, over 120 million tourists travelled internationally in the month of May. That’s from the United Nations World Tourism Organization. This May, that number dropped to a little over two million –– international tourism was down 98% since last year.

So what happened to the communities, habitats, and animals that depend on ecotourism revenue? To find out, we spoke with several organizations that operate in Southern African countries like Botswana and South Africa. Usually, these countries draw hoards of ecotourists, eager to see the striking wildlife of southern africa, like rhinos, lions and giraffes. But this year, things are different.

Nina Fascione: So how does one even talk about this situation? It’s so hard on everybody, the world over it, like nothing we’ve ever seen.

Curtis Segarra:: That’s Nina Fascione from the International Rhino Foundation, or IRF for short. It’s a group that supports the lumbering animals through research, community support, and conservation funding. Now, they’re providing emergency funds to ecotourism companies in southern Africa that have seen their income source — that is tourism — dry up.

Nina Fascione: (3:48) It is impacting IRF and rhino conservation as much as anything. And our biggest concern as this started, was how the lack of tourist dollars were going to impact rhino protection and monitoring and conservation on the ground because tourist dollars really pay for a lot of these important, vital programs.

Curtis Segarra:: What are these vital programs? And what do they look like?

Curtis Segarra:: Many ecotourism companies based in Africa follow a similar model: tourists travel to Africa to see some of the rarest animals. Of course, we’re talking about elephants, giraffes, lions, and yeah — rhinos. In doing so, tourists provide economic support to companies and communities that work to protect these animals. Now it’s worth noting that not all ecotourism companies are created — or operated —  quite the same. Some have drawn criticism for exploiting local communities. But the ones that are transparent about their funding, education, and leadership seem to do some good conservation work. They’ve done so despite many challenges, as Jon Taylor, Deputy Director at Save the Rhino points out.

Jon Taylor That’s an industry that has survived all kinds of, of, of political unrest in local areas and natural disasters and disease, uh, outbreaks more locally, but COVID-19 has just shut the entire industry down, uh, virtually overnight. And for many of our conservation partners, particularly in Africa, but not only Africa, it’s their primary source of income.

Curtis Segarra: Save the Rhino, is an international organization fighting rhino poaching and trafficking. Now they’re feeling COVID’s effects too. 

Jon Taylor: So, uh, ourselves and other NGOs who support their efforts for conservation have, um, had to leap into action to try and fill some of those funding gaps, where conservation has just shut down.

Curtis Segarra: In 2018, tourism contributed 139 billion rand –– the equivalent of 8 billion US dollars –– to South Africa alone. But many of these counties also face the temptation of poaching. Rhino horn can fetch 3,000 dollars a pound or more. And Rhino horns can top 20-lbs, so a single horn can be a life-changing amount of money.  

This poaching market is driven primarily by a demand in China and Vietnam, where some people believe horns have curing properties. Despite a lack of medical evidence, they’re used in traditional medicine to help with everything from cancer to hangovers. And people are willing to pay a lot of cash to get their hands on the rhino goods, which of course, can increase the temptation for poachers.

Conservation efforts for this charismatic animal have helped save some species from the brink.  The greater one-horned rhino has bounced back from two hundred individuals, to a few thousand. For other species, like the northern white rhino, it’s a bleaker story: only two individuals, both female, remain. Currently, three out of the world’s five rhino species are critically endangered.

So for tourists, ecotourism is about seeing these endangered animals in the wild. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For the animals, it might be life or death.

As Neil Midlane, a Manager at Wilderness Safaris, a luxury tourism company offering tours in Africa, explains: 

Neil Midlane: Travel can be about a lot more than just getting to see it, to see, see sites like the Eiffel tower or Canals of Venice, or if you choose to go to the right places and travel with the right people, just by traveling there, you can make a significant, positive difference to both, you know, conservation and communities.

Curtis Segarra: Midlane says Wilderness Safaris hasn’t been forced to make layoffs yet.. He says they should be able to make it through the year. But like everyone, they’re hoping the pandemic ends sooner rather than later. 

Neil Midlane: We’ve got lots of different scenarios that we’re kind of playing with. We can open camps, you know, pretty much tomorrow but if people can’t travel internationally to get there, then um, it’s just not going to happen. 

Curtis Segarra: Midlane says this translates to hard times for communities that rely on money from tourism.

Neil Midlane: I suspect that it’s going to get, going to get worse. Some people, I think even with the first reduced salary, were immediately thrown into a position where they couldn’t afford to buy food. And some people may have some small savings that carried him through, but maybe in two months time, that’s gone. So I think it will probably escalate at the time. And we know from research that we did that we have an average of about seven people dependent on one salary from tourism in the villages where we, where people, where our employees live. So the impact can be very significant in terms of numbers of people down the line.

Curtis Segarra: Jon Taylor, from Save the Rhino, says he also worries what the mounting pressure from limited resources could mean in the long-term. 

Jon Taylor: Well, you’ve got communities whose income have just been, has just been significantly reduced, obviously they’re suffering. But, the product of that suffering can be an increase in attempted poaching activity….(closer to 9:40) People are desperate. So they go looking in the forest for resources, they go looking for bushmeat, whether that’s in Asia or Africa.

Curtis Segarra: So things are looking bleak in the near future for some communities dependent on ecotourism. For wildlife, that can complicate survival too.  

Tourism is a major deterrent to poaching. After all, poachers don’t want to take down a rhino while tourists are around. But now that the watchful eyes of tourists are gone, has poaching increased in South Africa?

John Taylor: The country has been through a very serious lockdown for the last three months. So what we’re, what we’re seeing at the moment is definitely a decrease in poaching, which is gratifying in the short term, but we’re also picking up anecdotal evidence of poaching gangs building using this time to build up their resources, to recruit new people, um, to, to re regroup themselves

Curtis Segarra: As it turns out, poachers aren’t immune to COVID-19, so they’re staying inside too. But they’ll undoubtedly return eventually. The question is when?

Nina Fascione: I mean, poaching is a huge problem. You know, poaching has increased in 2019. So frankly the fact that there was almost a little bit of a relief from that this year was a good thing, but no one can let their guard down. so right. My biggest worry is, uh, is the crime syndicates moving again before the tourists do. (Laughs.)

Curtis Segarra: For now, it’s a waiting game — one with high-stakes and impatient players.

Nina Fascione: I don’t know that I’m any different than anyone else and just kind of holding out hope for a vaccine and treatments and getting past this so that we can get back to the business of protecting rhinos.

Curtis Segarra: Taylor says this could be a time to re-think how to support conservation. 

Jon Taylor: With the wider environmental picture with climate change, clear and present with biodiversity loss on a massive scale, uh, clear and present danger, um, is a bigger question about in the long term, how do we value conservation and how do we, how do we monetize it? The challenges are huge, but there is also an enormous community of people around the world who care very much about conservation and are willing to try and do everything they can to help. Um, so I think in the short term, it will be the worldwide community of people who care, who probably have to step up and, and try to plug these, these funding gaps while as the ecotourism industry picks itself back up again.