I have a friend in South Africa who comes from a long, long line of old Afrikaaners. He told me that back in the day when many safari companies did business there and in surrounding countries, most of the local governments had a quiet understanding with the professional hunters - that poachers would be shot on sight, left in the bush, and nothing would be said about it by anyone.

Attie says there was much less poaching in those days.

People have rights. Animals do not. If you need to get some rational back on watch Ghost and the Darkness

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/co...

Professor John Hanks is the former head of the World Wide Fund for Nature in South Africa. He says tourism and donations do not provide the billions of dollar needed.

“I think trophy hunting in South Africa is really absolutely essential if we are going to look for long-term future for rhinos in the whole of Africa…there’s hardly a single country anywhere that can afford to run its national parks as they should be run… Here we are in South Africa, one of the richest countries in the continent, Kruger Park has a million visitors a year and they still cannot afford to defend the rhinos.”

The hunting industry in South Africa brings in more than $744 million each year. The industry employs about 70,000 people. And about 9,000 trophy hunters travel to South Africa every year. Ninety percent of them come from the United States. In 2012, foreign hunters spent $115 million in South Africa. Trophy hunting is the most profitable form of commercial land use in the country.

Herman Meyeridricks is the president of the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa. He argues that legal hunting is important to wildlife protection.

“The only way there will be incentive for those landowners to protect and keep on investing in rhino is if they have an economic value. They can only have an economic value if there is an end-user that is willing to pay for that and that is the trophy hunter.”