The largest rhino farm in the world, located in South Africa, will be auctioned in April by its owner who is overwhelmed by the cost overruns of his project to save the species threatened by poaching, the owner announced Monday.
The South African businessman, John Hume, 81, opened the farm in 2009 on an 8,500-hectare property in the northwest of the country and currently has about 2,000 white rhinos and employs about 100 people.
Last year he had promised to release a hundred specimens into the wild each year.
“Breeding rhinos is a very expensive pleasure,” he told GLM on Monday.
Hume said caring for one such animal until the age of four can cost 500,000 rand (26,000 euros) and said he has been breeding them “for 30 years without making a profit”.
The organization that manages the project, Platinum Rhino, explained in a statement that it is looking for “ideally a buyer, individual or foundation, who has a passion for rhino conservation and the means required to continue breeding.”
South Africa is home to 80% of the world’s rhino population.
The country became a poaching hotspot, driven by Asian demand, where the animal’s horns are used in traditional medicine for supposed therapeutic or aphrodisiac effects.
In 2022, 448 rhinos were killed in South Africa, or three fewer than the previous year, according to the government, because of anti-poaching measures taken in national parks, it said.
In 2017, John Hume had organized a controversial online sale of rhino horns to raise funds to finance their conservation, sparking outrage from environmental advocates.
The horns for sale arose from appendage removal operations. To prevent attacks by poachers, the huge mammals were anesthetized and their horn cut off by a veterinarian. The procedure is painless and the horn grows back afterwards.
Rhino horn, made of keratin, is worth $60,000 per kilo on the black market, more than cocaine.