Module 152 · Conservation Economics
The Rhino
Underground
One man bred 2,000 rhinos. Nobody bid when he put them up for auction. A conservation NGO bought them all and launched the largest wildlife translocation in history. Then the breeder was arrested for trafficking the horns. The story of how 15% of the world’s white rhinos went from farm to freedom — and what happened to the man who bred them.
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rhinos to rewild
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moved in year one
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calves born wild
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charges against hume
0%
of global white rhino
001 · The Arc
From six rhinos to 2,000. From auction to arrest.
John Hume bought six white rhinos in 1996. Over three decades, he bred them into the world’s largest captive herd — spending an estimated $150 million. His plan was to fund conservation by selling legally harvested horn. The international trade ban never lifted. The money ran out. The auction failed. African Parks rescued the rhinos. Then investigators found the horns.
John Hume buys 6 white rhinos from Natal Parks Board. Property developer turned wildlife rancher.
Rhino poaching crisis begins. SA incidents rise from 13 to hundreds. Kruger epicentre.
SA bans domestic rhino horn trade. Hume challenges in court.
Poaching peaks: 1,004 rhinos killed in SA alone. Kruger population plummets 10,000→4,000.
Hume security costs: $425,000/month. Last known poaching on his farm: March 2017.
Domestic ban overturned. Hume auctions 264 horns. Few buyers. Stockpile grows to 6 tons.
Platinum Rhino put up for auction. Asking price $10M. Zero bids. 2,000 rhinos at risk.
African Parks purchases farm + all 2,000 rhinos. Emergency donor funding. Breeding ends.
First 40 rhinos rewilded to Munywana Conservancy, KwaZulu-Natal.
120 rhinos translocated to Greater Kruger reserves. Security state-of-the-art.
376 total rhinos moved in Year 1. Target of 300 exceeded. 33 calves born wild.
70 rhinos flown 3,400km to Akagera National Park, Rwanda. First cross-continental move.
John Hume arrested. 55 charges: racketeering, fraud, rhino horn trafficking. 7-year investigation.
Target: 7-20 wild meta-populations by 2033. 300 rhinos/year. The largest wildlife translocation in history.
002 · The Crisis
12,000+ rhinos killed since 2008. One every eight hours at peak.
The poaching crisis that created Hume’s farm also destroyed the justification for it. Between 2007 and 2025, South Africa alone lost over 12,000 rhinos. The 2014 peak of 1,215 killed dropped to 352 in 2025 — a 16% decline that masks a complicated picture. Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in KZN saw a 68% drop thanks to dehorning. But Kruger nearly doubled, from 88 to 175. The syndicates adapt faster than the systems designed to stop them.
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2009
2010
2011
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2015
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2024
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South Africa rhino poaching. Sources: DFFE, Save the Rhino International
Peak: 1,215 (2014)
2025: 352 killed = 16% decline. But Kruger nearly doubled (88→175). Success in KZN (198→63). © Dancing with Lions
003 · The Collapse
Kruger spent $74 million on anti-poaching. The population still halved.
Kruger National Park held over 10,000 white rhinos in 2010. Despite helicopter patrols, AI monitoring, sniffer dogs, and $74 million in anti-poaching expenditure between 2017 and 2023, the population fell to roughly 2,800. Seven rangers were dismissed in 2025 after failed polygraph tests linked to the December poaching surge. The lesson: you cannot protect your way to survival. You need safe places first. African Parks understood this. Hume’s farm proved breeding alone cannot work either. The answer was rewilding into secured landscapes.
10.0k
2010
8.4k
2013
5.5k
2016
4.6k
2018
3.5k
2020
3.2k
2023
2.8k
2025
Kruger National Park white rhino population. $74M spent on anti-poaching (2017-23). Population still declined. Sources: SANParks, Heydinger et al. © Dancing with Lions
004 · The Destinations
Where 2,000 rhinos are going. And who is protecting them.
Rhino Rewild exceeded its Year 1 target: 376 animals moved against a goal of 300. Each destination undergoes rigorous “Rhino Ready” assessment — habitat, security, national regulatory support, and the recipient’s long-term management capacity. The June 2025 airlift of 70 rhinos to Rwanda’s Akagera Park — 3,400 kilometres by plane — was the largest cross-continental rhino translocation ever attempted. Thirty-three calves have already been born wild. The populations are not just surviving. They are reproducing.
South Africa, KZN · May 2024
Community land restitution. First rewilding under Rhino Rewild.
South Africa, Mpumalanga/Limpopo · Jun 2024
6 private reserves. 33 calves already born. Mating confirmed.
South Africa · Q3-Q4 2024
Multiple private reserves. One site reintroduced rhino after local extinction.
South Africa · 2024
Building parasite immunity before cross-border moves.
Rwanda · Jun 2025
3,400km airlift. Now 100 white rhino total. $4.7M park revenue.
DRC · Planned
Former last northern white rhino site. Howard G Buffett Foundation funded.
Totals to date
376 rewilded in 2024. 70 to Rwanda in 2025. 33 calves born wild. Target: ~300/year through 2033. Goal: 7-20 self-sustaining meta-populations across Africa.
005 · The Contradiction
The man who saved 2,000 rhinos is in handcuffs for selling their horns.
John Hume bred 1,870 rhino calves over 27 years. His farm was state-of-the-art: $425,000 per month in security, helicopter patrols, armed rangers, guard dogs. The last known poaching incident on his property was March 2017. By any biological measure, the breeding programme was a success. There are 2,000 more white rhinos alive because of it.
His business model was simple and, to him, logical: rhino horn is keratin. It grows back. Saw it off humanely, sell it legally, use the proceeds to fund more breeding. Over the years, he accumulated a 6-ton stockpile of horn — worth, at peak black market prices, somewhere north of $300 million. The international ban on rhino horn trade, in place since 1977, meant he could never sell it legally abroad. He fought the domestic ban and won in 2017. He held an auction. Few buyers came.
On August 19, 2025, the South African Police's Hawks unit arrested Hume on 55 charges including racketeering, fraud, and rhino horn trafficking. A seven-year investigation alleged that between 2017 and 2024, Hume and five co-accused obtained fraudulent permits to trade horn domestically but used them to funnel horns to Southeast Asia. Rhino horn can sell for $60,000 per kilogram on the black market — more valuable than gold, platinum, or diamonds.
The arrest reframes the entire Rhino Rewild story. African Parks bought the farm and the rhinos in September 2023. They did not buy Hume's stockpile of horns. What happened to them — whether Hume still owned them or sold them — became the central question of the criminal investigation. The man who built the world's largest rhino herd may have been trafficking their horns the entire time African Parks was rewilding them.
This is the conservation economy in miniature. The biological programme worked. The economic model could not sustain itself legally. The horn had value that the living animal, in Hume's captive context, did not. African Parks understood what Hume did not: that the value of a rhino is not in its horn. It is in the wild ecosystem where 33 calves are now being born without human intervention, in the Akagera tourism economy generating $4.7 million a year, in the genetic diversity of 7-20 future meta-populations scattered across the continent.
The breeding worked. The rewilding is working. The man who started it may go to prison. None of these facts contradict each other. All of them are true at the same time.
African Parks had no intention of being the owner of a captive rhino breeding operation with 2,000 rhinos. However, we fully recognise the moral imperative of finding a solution for these animals so that they can once again play their integral role in fully functioning ecosystems.
Peter Fearnhead, CEO, African Parks
006 · Connected Intelligence
Go deeper.
A ranger earns $200/month. A poacher earns $5,000 per horn. The war on poaching is a war on poverty dressed up as a war on crime.
Ten models scored. Five mechanisms. African Parks as the management franchise archetype. Where Rhino Rewild fits in the taxonomy.
Akagera — where 70 of these rhinos now live — already generates $4.7M/year. Rwanda proves the high-value tourism model.
Sources
African Parks — Rhino Rewild initiative, Annual Report 2024
Save the Rhino International — Poaching numbers database, DFFE statistics
Mongabay (Sep 2023) — African Parks to rewild 2,000 rhinos from controversial breeding program
National Geographic (Oct 2023) — No one wanted to buy 2,000 rhinos. What happened next.
Daily Maverick (Sep 2023) — Hume's herd of 2,000 African rhinos get a last-minute lifeline
ABC News (Aug 2025) — South Africa accuses 6 of massive rhino horn trafficking scheme
Mongabay (Aug 2025) — Rhino breeder John Hume accused of horn trafficking, arrested
Africa Geographic (2024) — First rhinos rewilded from Hume breeding operation
Rwanda Development Board — Akagera rhino translocation, $4.7M revenue data
IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group — population assessments
SANParks — Kruger rhino population data, dehorning programme
Research, visualisation & analysis: Dancing with Lions
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