World Bank to finance black rhino conservation
Two Eastern Cape Province reserves to benefit
Big investors are buying World Bank bonds to help protect black rhinos in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The five-year bonds with a total value of $150 million are aimed at increasing the population of this critically endangered species in the Addo Elephant Park (AEP) and the Great Fish River Nature Reserve (GFRNR) .
The unique Wildlife Conservation Bond (WCB), as it is called, was launched to support 153,000 hectares of these two reserves that are not only critical for the survival of black rhinos, but also for entire ecosystems.
The World Bank and the Global Environment Facility have put together a plan, with the assistance of several conservation driven organisations, to provide at least $10 million to the two reserves over five years. In local currency, this is the equivalent of about 150 million rand – an enormous amount that could go a long way.
Real Safari is not finance newsletter so I won’t go into the complicated mechanisms of how the bond issue will generate funds, but if you are interested read the World Bank press release here.
It considered over 130 sites as potential beneficiaries for the innovative bonds, but eventually selected just the two reserves, both situated in the Eastern Cape. The AEP is about an hour’s drive from my home while the GFRNR is even closer, about 45 minutes away.
Regular readers of the Real Safari have visited the AEP many times through the virtual pages of this newsletter so they have reason to be pleased with the additional funding. SANParks, an entity of the South African government, owns and manages the AEP and 20 other reserves throughout the country.
The Eastern Cape Provincial Government owns and manages the GFRNR.
While administratively, the two organisations are quite separate, they have some level of cooperation with each other and with private reserves to ensure the sustainability of their conservation efforts.
Why the black rhinos?
Rhinos all around the world are critically endangered because poachers kill them for their horns. Some people in China and Vietnam pay astronomical sums of money for rhino horns incorrectly believing that they have medicinal value. In fact, rhino horns are made largely of keratin – the same as your fingernails. Read the Real Safari Newsletter about this issue here.
The World Bank chose to fund the protection of black rhinos because these large animals are relatively easy to monitor and they function as an umbrella species in their ecosystems. In order to protect black rhinos it is necessary to manage a large area where they can roam free and so many other endemic species are able to benefit from this protection.
Black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) are one of only two species of rhinoceroses that have survived in Africa. In spite of their common name, black rhinos are not black, they are usually somewhere between brown and grey. It is believed that they earned their name to distinguish them from white rhinos, which are definitely not white.
The story goes that the ‘white’ in white rhino derives from the Dutch word ‘wijd’ which means ‘wide’ and supposedly refers to its wide mouth. This is an important distinguishing characteristic between the two species. The mouth of a white rhino is wide and nearly square while that of the black rhino is almost pointy or beak-like.
The white rhino is grazer – it chomps on grass and generally prefers more open savannah. The black rhino is a browser using its lips to pull leaves off trees and it usually spends most of its time in forests or thick bush. This distinction means that black rhinos generally hold their heads up higher than their white counterparts.
There are other differences. White rhinos are substantially bigger than black rhinos and while white rhino calves usually walk in front of their mothers, for black rhinos it is the other way round.
Why the two parks?
The World Bank’s Michael Bennett said the Addo Elephant Park (AEP) and the Great Fish River Nature Reserve (GFRNR) where were chosen because they have a good track record of delivering results. Both parks had almost no black rhinos as recently as the 1990s and had to import animals from Namibia.
Since then, numbers at the AEP and the GFRNR have increased steadily and their respective conservation teams have improved their ability to monitor these animals.
The Wildlife Conservation Bond (WCB) is the first ever financial instrument conceived to channel investments to conservation goals – in this case measured by the increase in black rhino populations. The WCBs will reward the parks according to how successful they are at achieving their growth targets.
The premise is that investors will fund activities with clear conservation goals and create conservation related employment for local communities. The funding will ensure that the game reserves are well maintained and able to support a healthy tourism industry which can provide jobs in areas where unemployment is rampant.
The WCBs will ultimately test the proof of concept of a unique financial instrument to fund wildlife conservation. If it can be shown to increase the growth rate of the black rhino population, then similar bonds can be issued to ensure the long term viability of other endangered species.
Large sums of money are invested in this project so it is important to have an independent, reliable organisation to ensure that rhino populations are accurately calculated.
The individual parks have the necessary tools and techniques to manage the animals and will report on the rhino population growth rate. An independent conservation organisation, Conservation Alpha, will do quality assurance and collate all the data.
The Zoological Society of London has committed to checking the work of Conservation Alpha.
The project sounds wonderful and I hope it surpasses all expectations, but it makes me wonder why the Environment Minister, Barbara Creecy is willing to allow hunters to shoot these marvellous creatures. (Real Safari Newsletter on the hunting of black rhinos and other wildlife – read here).
Links
South Africa Pioneers Innovative Wildlife Conservation Bond to Protect Black Rhinos and Support Local Communities - World Bank media release
Addo Elephant Park - Official web site