AR-News: South African wildlife draw attention on auctioneer's block

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

_http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/9055595.htm_ 
(http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/9055595.htm)   

KansasCity.com
Thu, Jul. 01, 2004
 
BY LAURIE GOERING

Chicago Tribune

HLUHLUWE-IMFOLOZI PARK, South Africa - (KRT) - An overpopulation of antelope 
in  South Africa's national parks used to lead to one inevitable outcome: 
antelope  jerky. 
But in mid-June the excess rhino, giraffe and nyala antelope that once roamed 
 the tan hills of Hluhluwe-iMfolozi found themselves corralled and 
confronting  not hunters but buyers with auction numbers stuffed in their pockets. 
"If the prices come down we'd like to increase our numbers," said Irvin Tam,  
a private rhino breeder, as he looked over Lot 311, a pair of white rhinos. 
The  enormous animals, captured a couple of months earlier, barely looked up 
from  their hay. 
Each June, Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, one of South Africa's largest wildlife  
reserves, hosts the world's premier game auction, designed to rid the park and  
neighboring reserves of excess animals, raise cash for conservation and avoid  
culling. 
For a few thousand dollars, anyone with a big piece of land, decent fences  
and enough money to pay the transport - $2.30 a mile for a rhino - can buy a  
piece of wild Africa. Most of the animals go to South Africa's increasingly  
numerous and popular private game reserves, but a few end up in zoos overseas.  
Many, particularly those with attractive horns, are destined to be shot by  
paying hunters from abroad. 
"Essentially, this auction is a management tool," said Jeff Gaisford,  a 
spokesman for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, which runs the parks. By keeping animal  
populations in check, the reserves protect their ecosystems, and the sale  spreads 
animal genes across the country, replacing ancient migrations stopped by  the 
increased use of fencing.
The million-plus dollars that the sale brings in each year  also helps pay 
for conservation efforts at the reserves, he said. 
"We know some of the animals we're selling will eventually  be hunted," 
Gaisford said. But before the auctions began, game wardens in  Hluhluwe-iMfolozi 
often were sent out to shoot 300 nyala a night, he said. "For  men who spend 
their lives protecting these animals, to shoot that many every  night was 
soul-destroying," he said. 
The meat from culled impala, Gaisford said, was sold to  local butchers for 
16 cents a pound, about $6 an impala. But in the auction  ring, a live impala 
brings about $70. So even if the animal ends up dead, the  auction makes sense, 
he said. 
The annual auction, now in its 16th year, is as much  carnival as sale. 
Vendors outside the sale tent sell antelope pellets and kudu  biltong, the local 
version of jerky. Inside, bidders wave their numbers as the  animals - held in 
sturdy pens a short distance away - are displayed on a giant  screen. 
"Now, gentlemen, we can't sell him for that" chided the  auctioneer as the 
camera panned over a striped nyala bull, so far bringing only  $1,000 despite 
his impressive horns. 
Prices are as unpredictable as the animals themselves. A  handful of 
ostriches, for reasons no one can understand, bring an impressive  $500 each. Dassies 
- rock hyraxes that look a bit like groundhogs - go for $47  as buyers try to 
replace colonies killed by a recent viral outbreak. A pair of  common duikers, 
tiny dog-sized antelope, bring $675 each, a South African  record. 
Joe Dawson, a young South African buying red hartebeest,  zebra and blesbok 
to stock a new 6,000-acre reserve near the town of Estcourt,  South Africa, 
shook his head. 
"Those duikers were half the price of a giraffe. Crazy," he  said. "I'm going 
home to catch all the duikers on the property." 
White rhinos, however, are going cheap. The once-endangered  animals have 
made a huge comeback in South Africa, the only country where they  can be hunted, 
and the market is now flooded. Rhinos that brought $20,000 at  last year's 
sale are going for $17,000. Many fail to bring the minimum price set  by the 
park, cutting the total auction take to $1.3 million, less than half of  the $3.3 
million the sale brought in last year. 
Basic market principles explain the problem, said Franz Ras,  a wildlife 
broker who spends the auction working a cell phone. Many rhino  hunters pay for 
animals two years in advance, he said. But the South African  rand has 
strengthened dramatically in the last two years, which makes rhinos  more expensive 
against the dollar. 
Bidders, looking for animals for hunts two years down the  road, are holding 
off on buying, afraid the rand could drop again and cut their  margins. 
Gaisford is philosophical about the depressed rhino market.  Falling prices, 
he said, simply mean that rhino conservation is an increasing  success. 
Hippos are the most troublesome animal offered at this  year's sale, for both 
buyer and seller. Catching the bad-tempered giants  requires stealthily 
putting an electric fence around a grazing patch and water  hole, letting the 
hippos finish the grass, then putting cut grass in a large  trap built of steel 
plates. Getting the hippos to eat in the trap takes about  three weeks, Gaisford 
said, "then you close the door and all hell breaks  loose." 
Using tranquilizer darts isn't a possibility, he said,  because the spooked 
animals head for water and promptly drown. 
Because of the difficulty in holding hippos once caught,  those offered last 
weekend were sold pre-capture, with promises they would be  delivered to the 
buyer's property within a few weeks. That meant the park  couldn't guarantee if 
they'd be male or female. Finding out the sex of a hippo  that spends the day 
in the water and the night grazing on land is no easy  task. 
(subscription) 
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"Look deep into the eyes of  any animal, and then for a moment, trade places, 
their life becomes as precious  as yours and you become as vulnerable as 
them. Now smile if you believe all  animals deserve our respect and our 
protection, for in a way, they are us, and  we are them." -
Philip Ochoa Board Member, ALL FOR ANIMALS 
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