Dear Australian Parliamentary Committee, Thank-You for Allowing
Dear Australian Parliamentary Committee, Thank-you for allowing submissions on your terms of reference. I am just a simple concerned South African, who cares deeply about the inevitable extinction of our rhino, should we fail to try something different. Our current strategies of education, governance and policing, heavily armed security force protection of rhinos, and demand reduction, all of which, although great in principal and should certainly not be stopped, are simply not working fast enough. I have no great credentials other than a massive passion for this beautiful wild animal and for the people of Africa to which they belong, but I hope you are willing to listen none-the-less. My greatest concern, and I believe the biggest threat to our rhino, is the prevailing attitudes across the world with specific regard to the continued international ban on trade in rhino horn by CITES, which is supported by Australia and so many other countries, with little to no knowledge of the hard-core situation as it really is on the ground. This to me is sheer insanity, fuelled by the propaganda pedalled and funded by supposedly “green”, ”animal rights” organisations, as if their lives depended on it. Did I just say that? Oh yes, I did, because without this cause they certainly could not pull on the heart strings of an ill-informed public for the hundreds of millions of US dollars of donations they receive, that seldom reach real live rhinos on the ground (see https://www.scribd.com/document/255362337/A-Stampede-of-Hypocrisy) So firstly we need to separate out the elephant issue from the rhino issue.
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