Now Swaziland has submitted a proposal to CITES to legalize trade in rhino horn

The southern African kingdom of Swaziland has filed an eleventh-hour proposal to legalize international trade in rhino horn, less than a week after South Africa abandoned a similar proposal.

In the leaked proposal, which is reported to have been formally submitted to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Swaziland officials state that it was in fact the withdrawal of South Africa’s proposal that prompted the country to submit its own.

Swaziland proposes to sell a 330-kilogram (nearly 730-pound) stockpile of horn it confiscated from poachers or collected from animals that died of natural causes. Practitioners of traditional medicine in China and Vietnam pay handsomely for rhino horn — Swaziland says its stockpile could fetch as much as $9.9 million — believing it to have curative properties, though in fact it is made from the same substance as human fingernails and has no known medicinal value.

There are two rhino parks in Swaziland that house 73 white rhinos. In the proposal, the country said that it would use the proceeds from the sale of rhino horn to “ease financial pressure at a time when Swaziland’s rhino parks are struggling with the recent surge in rhino protection costs, particularly escalating security requirements to protect the country’s rhino populations against the onslaught of criminal poaching syndicates.”

Swaziland also wants to harvest 20 kilograms (about 44 pounds) of rhino horn in a non-lethal manner every year, which would raise an additional $600,000 annually. Rhino horn can regenerate after being cut, and the funds would help to pay Game Rangers better wages and defray the costs of the necessary infrastructure and equipment to keep its rhino parks functioning, according to the proposal.

The proposal mentions the current poaching crisis hitting Africa as further evidence that new anti-poaching strategies must be employed, and argues that the proceeds from selling rhino horn would help pay for those new efforts.

2015 was the deadliest year ever for rhinos in Africa, with at least 1,305 animals killed by poachers.

“The ban on trade in rhino horn has been in force for 39 years and it is clearly not working — rhino losses from horn poachers are escalating and driving rhinos toward extinction,” the proposal states. “At present 100% of the proceeds from the sale of rhino horn are taken by criminals, while rhino custodians pay 100% of the costs of rhino protection and production yet they desperately need funds to cover these costs.”

UK newspaper The Guardian was told by Swaziland officials “directly involved in the drafting” of the proposal that it had been formally submitted and will be discussed at the CITES Conference of Parties scheduled to begin this September in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“The bid is likely to fail, because the majority of parties have little appetite for a legalised trade, preferring to focus on dampening demand in Asia,” The Guardian added.

Cambridge, UK-based wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC told the newspaper that it was taken completely by surprise by the proposal given the fact that it wouldn’t be legal for anyone else to buy Swaziland’s rhino horn even if the country were to legalize the trade.

Then of course there’s the impact on conservation efforts to be considered, the group added. “There is still significant uncertainty as to how existing markets would be affected by any legal trade in terms of supply–demand dynamics,” according to a TRAFFIC spokesperson. “Such a sale might well stimulate further illegal trade and thus compound the ongoing poaching crisis.”