SIMON ADLER: So should I start us?

ANNIE MCEWEN: Mm-hmm.

SIMON: Okay.

ANNIE: Go for it.

SIMON: Three, two, one. Hey, I'm Simon Adler. This is Radiolab.

ANNIE: I'm Annie McEwen. This is Radiolab.

SIMON: Well, okay, Annie. We both find ourselves in different countries talking to one another, and you've brought me here because you're picking this week's rerun. That's all I know.

ANNIE: That's right. Yes. Okay, so my pick is one of your episodes, Simon.

SIMON: What an honor.

ANNIE: Okay, so the reason I picked this is because the moment I met you, this episode had just come out that early, early morning, probably at 4:00 am.

SIMON: Yeah.

ANNIE: And it was my first day at the office. And I had just come up the elevator, and I was really nervous. And there was Simon Adler's desk, and it was empty. Where's Simon Adler? Well, he was up very, very late making this amazing episode that you can go now listen to. And then a few hours later, you came in, and you just sort of emanated this peace and calm and pride because you had just made this episode called "Tthe Rhino Hunter." I don't know if you remember that.

SIMON: Okay, this is now—yes, okay. I don't remember the calm, but I—and I don't remember—I remember—didn't we sit on a bench your first day? I sort of recall that.

ANNIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SIMON: But, like, why—beyond that bench, why did you pick this?

ANNIE: Well, okay. I mean, the reason ...

SIMON: Just to flatter me. Was it just to flatter me?

ANNIE: Well, I think that the reason why—I mean, I love this episode for so many reasons, but I think one in particular is just the way it totally, like. breaks your brain in half. Do you know what I mean?

SIMON: Hmm.

ANNIE: You kind of walk into it thinking, like, "All right, I think this way about this thing," and then you kind of listen, and then about halfway through, you're like, "Oh, wait. Now I think this way about that thing." And then you're kind of sitting in this, like, "Oh, no!" And the two halves of your brain are like "Ooh!" And then by the end, you're just like, "Well, I need to go on a long walk and have a time to just straighten everything out, because you've just sort of like—you've just sort of plied the two pieces of my brain apart. And I think that, like, that—I mean, it's sort of cheesy to say at this point, but I think that is something that, of course, our world needs more of right now, and this episode just feeds it to you in pill form.

SIMON: Well, wow!

ANNIE: [laughs]

SIMON: Feel free to send me the medical bill for your brain breaking.

ANNIE: Okay, cool.

SIMON: Yeah. But I'm honored. I'm honored to have broken your brain.

ANNIE: For sure. Yeah. But anyway, I don't know, should we just, like, play it or what?

SIMON: Sure. Well, yeah. It's your pick, so yeah. Yeah, do it.

ANNIE: Okay, let's go! One, two, three. Jad and Robert, go!

SIMON: Go!

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumurad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And today, a story that we've been working on for close to two years, but just before we were about to put it on the air, this happened.

[NEWS CLIP: Our next story in perspective, it's as if someone had killed Lassie.]

ROBERT: As you probably know, over this past summer, a Minnesota dentist named Walter Palmer paid ...

JAD: $55 grand!

ROBERT: To get permission to hunt and kill a lion.

[NEWS CLIP: A lion named Cecil.]

[NEWS CLIP: An African lion considered to be a national treasure in the country of Zimbabwe.]

JAD: This is a pretty famous lion. Sort of the star of that park. It had been in a few studies. So immediately there were allegations of poaching. Zimbabwe, where Cecil was killed, opened up an investigation. But what really caught our eye ...

ROBERT: Was the reaction from the public.

[NEWS CLIP: "Lion Killer." The words painted on the home of Dr. Walter Palmer.]

JAD: People found out his home address, started sharing it online.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, protesters: Shut him down! Shut him down!]

[NEWS CLIP: The backlash threatening his livelihood now.]

ROBERT: Protesters gathered outside his office.

[NEWS CLIP: Posting signs on the locked doors branding him a coward and a killer.]

ROBERT: He was forced to temporarily close his business.

[NEWS CLIP: Vilified across the internet.]

JAD: There were attacks all over social media and YouTube. And warning: this next minute contains some pretty strong language.

[NEWS CLIP: "You are truly scum of the earth," wrote one.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Walter fucking Palmer.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You know how fuckingdemented this motherfucker is?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: May he fuck his son to death.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I want somebody to take fucking revenge.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What would happen if it was you being hunted, motherfucker?]

JAD: Today, we bring you a story that we hope will be a little bit of signal in all that noise. This is a story about the strange relationship between wanting to hunt and kill an animal and wanting to save it.

ROBERT: And it comes from our producer Simon Adler.

SIMON: One two three four five. One two three four five.

SIMON: All right, so this story really started for me in Salt Lake City. This past February, I went to the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo, sometimes referred to as the Super Bowl of hunting. So I'm walking through this airplane hanger-sized room. It's at this massive convention center called the Salt Palace. Over 40,000 people there. Gun manufacturers, there were bow makers, there were duck call makers.

VENDOR: This one's a single reed.

[duck call]

SIMON: Camouflage clothing, apparel companies.

ANNOUNCER: Well, this place is rocking, and I hope you're having a good time. And if you're having a good time, I want to hear a big yee-haw. Whoo!

SIMON: As part of the expo, off this main floor, there was a banquet hall where there was an emcee who was working the crowd.

ANNOUNCER: Well tonight, I want to continue on a couple of thoughts that we touched on last night. You know, our greatest conservation president, Theodore Roosevelt, said "The wildlife and its habitat cannot speak for itself. So we must." Well let me tell you, we have, and we will continue to speak. But we've gotta go further than speaking. We're gonna have to suit up in our armor to go into battle to protect our wildlife and our way of life. Well let me tell you, we are at war, brought on by the extreme radical environmental movement. If we're not vigilant and engage this enemy, the most endangered species in America could be the American hunter.

SIMON: Now one of the things that surprised me kind of right off the bat was talking to people, everybody kept coming back to this idea and hitting on this idea that, like, if it weren't for us, if it weren't for the hunters ...

HUNTER: The animals would not be alive without us hunting them. They would go extinct.

SIMON: I got that line over and over again.

HUNTER: There would be no animals out there to hunt.

SIMON: Basically what they mean by this is they are the ones that are paying to keep these animals around. They are the ones who are funding conservation. And I saw what that looked like on the final night of the Expo, Saturday night, when the organizers held this auction.

ANNOUNCER: And now's the time to open your wallets, get out your checkbooks, your credit cards. In fact, we'll even take IOUs written on the back of a napkin.

ANNOUNCER: Let's make some money for wildlife, buddy.

ANNOUNCER: Let's do it. Our first auction item tonight presented ...

SIMON: First couple items, they were just like guns.

ANNOUNCER: It's an American made Ruger.

SIMON: Rifles. But then ...

ANNOUNCER: Item number three, we're going to full curl stone ...

SIMON: ... a picture of this sheep pops up on this jumbo screen up on the stage.

ANNOUNCER: Big stone sheep, as you can see right there.

ANNOUNCER: Big ones.

ANNOUNCER: Big ones.

SIMON: Huge curling horns, thick brown coat.

ANNOUNCER: Beautiful color. That's on the bucket list, brother. That's on the bucket list.

SIMON: So the winner of this auction item, what they're actually buying is the chance to go up to Canada in this very specific area and to shoot one of these sheep. To get a tag to shoot one of these sheep.

ANNOUNCER: I have an opening bid of $30,000. That's what I'm talking about. Let's go. 32 and a half. 32 and a half. One down. I'm gonna now get 32 and a half for one of the best stone units there is. I'm 32 and a half down the middle. Need 35 one time, $35 thousand one time. And last call, sold them right over here. $35,000.

SIMON: A few items later ...

ANNOUNCER: Let's keep it rolling. We're at number six.

SIMON: A picture of a moose comes on the screen.

ANNOUNCER: For all of you moose hunters, what a great Shiras moose.

SIMON: The kind of moose that, you know, their antlers fan out like giant wings.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, I got $10,000. Somebody give me twelve and a half. Twelve and a half. Fifteen. Fifteen! Seventeen and a half. Seventeen and a half! Twenty! Twenty two and a half! Thirty. Thirty-five. Now $40,000.

JAD: Wait, so how—like, how does the conservation angle work?

SIMON: So basically how this works is each state has an agency that's responsible for managing its wildlife. And so if you're a hunter, you basically have to buy a tag from that state agency in order to shoot just about any animal. For example, in Arizona, Arizona is this grid of hunting areas. And you apply to a lottery for Zone B. I would really like to be able to shoot a moose. You put your $20 in. This is typical. And ...

ANNOUNCER: $60,000.

SIMON: ... if your name comes up, you get your tag for $20. But it's possible that you're not gonna get one. And sometimes you have to wait 10 or 20 years, especially for these big game animals.

ANNOUNCER: 67 and a half.

SIMON: So what these agencies do ...

ANNOUNCER: $70,000.

SIMON: ... they set aside a certain number of these tags every year, which are called 'conservation tags.' And what these conservation tags are, is like, if you just give a bunch of money right now ...

ANNOUNCER: I did not see this coming.

SIMON: ... you have free range to do what you want. Hop the line, shoot the animal you want. No waiting.

ANNOUNCER: $80,000! He did it. He freaking did it!

SIMON: And then all that money goes back to those state agencies for land management, habitat restoration. Like, we're talking millions of dollars that get raised this way. One auction item that I saw sold that night ...

ANNOUNCER: The special big game enhancement package.

SIMON: Which basically gave whoever won it the right to shoot just about any animal in the entire state of New Mexico for a year.

ANNOUNCER: I'm $175. I'll go $180 now, 180. Now I'm gonna get $190. Booyah! Sold at $230,000. Ladies and gentlemen ...

COREY KNOWLTON: You gonna do a sound check?

SIMON: Yeah. Get some levels.

SIMON: And in fact, the whole reason I had come to this convention was to talk to a guy who had done an auction like this. But in his case, it kind of blew up on him.

COREY KNOWLTON: I honestly did not expect to be in the position that I am today. My name is Corey Knowlton. C-O-R-E-Y-K-N-O-W-L-T-O-N.

SIMON: And is that how you're gonna sit, or are you gonna lean back more?

COREY KNOWLTON: You know, I'll probably move around a lot.

SIMON: Yeah. Okay.

SIMON: Corey Knowlton has become kind of the poster child of this idea of hunter conservation. He's a Texas millionaire. I met him in his hotel room right across the street from the Expo. He was in a white t-shirt, blue jeans, a little bit of stubble on his face. And the story goes, back in January of 2014, he was at an Expo super similar to this one put on by the Dallas Safari Club.

COREY KNOWLTON: I had my wife with me.

SIMON: He was just walking the floor when he bumped into a friend of his.

COREY KNOWLTON: A gentleman by the name of John Jackson, okay? And John Jackson heads up a group called Conservation Force. So anyway, John came to me.

SIMON: And he told Corey that he was worried that the Dallas Safari Club ...

COREY KNOWLTON: They were auctioning off an opportunity to hunt a black rhino in Namibia.

SIMON: The Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism had given them one tag to hunt one black rhino, and they were gonna auction it off. Now the black rhino is a critically endangered species. There are about 5,000 of them in the world, about 2,000 in Namibia. And what the Namibian government does is they auction off the older males.

COREY KNOWLTON: What happens is a black rhino gets older, it sees other rhinos, it wants to attack them oftentimes and kill them.

SIMON: So the government will offer up those problem rhinos for trophy hunting, and then use the money to protect the others from poachers.

JAD: Is poaching of the black rhinos a real issue?

SIMON: A huge issue. Rhino horn right now, it goes—what's the number? $60,000 a pound.

JAD: Oh my God!

SIMON: Yeah, it's worth, like, three times as much as gold per ounce.

JAD: Damn!

SIMON: In any case, Corey says the reason that John was so worried ...

COREY KNOWLTON: John said, "Corey, there's been a giant push of people coming out against this."

[NEWS CLIP: It's literally a license to kill.]

COREY KNOWLTON: "People don't want it to happen."

[NEWS CLIP: A permit to hunt down and kill one of the world's most endangered animals.]

COREY KNOWLTON: He said, "I'm really worried that we're not gonna have someone to bid this minimum bid."

SIMON: His friend was worried that there were gonna be these Namibian ministers there, and they just didn't want to be embarrassed.

COREY KNOWLTON: So John asked me, he said, "Would you at least bid the minimum bid?"

SIMON: Just to sort of, like, get the auction rolling.

COREY KNOWLTON: And as a friend, somebody that I've been friends with for over a decade, I said, yes, I would do that.

SIMON: So night of the auction ...

COREY KNOWLTON: They started this auction just like any other auction.

SIMON: Eventually, Corey makes his bid.

COREY KNOWLTON: $350,000.

SIMON: Thinking that would just goad the other bidders.

COREY KNOWLTON: That's right. I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna do what I told you. I'm gonna follow through with my commitment." When all of a sudden ...

SIMON: Going once, going twice ...

COREY KNOWLTON: Boom. It happens. You know, I'm just me. I'm just Corey Knowlton. I'm just a guy. I take people hunting. But immediately I've got people surrounding me, you know, a giant line of people congratulating me.

SIMON: He's like, "I didn't expect to be the guy who did it, but okay.

COREY KNOWLTON: But next 48 hours ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: We now know who paid $350,000 for a hunting permit to kill an endangered black rhino in Namibia.]

COREY KNOWLTON: ... a barrage of threats started coming.

[NEWS CLIP: He's being bombarded with death threats.]

[NEWS CLIP: Among the thousands of postings: "I hope the rhino rips you in half. Do your children know what a monster their father is? I hope you get what you deserve—a short and painful existence."]

SIMON: Corey says people threatened to murder his parents, to rape his wife to death.

COREY KNOWLTON: "I'm coming to your house. I'm gonna burn it down. I'm gonna put your kids in a wood chipper. I'm gonna do it in front of you."

SIMON: At any point in this, have you been super enthralled by the idea? Have you always wanted to shoot a black rhino?

COREY KNOWLTON: Yeah. Hey, Nate? Yeah, you're gonna—now we're gonna have to be quiet. I definitely haven't always wanted to shoot a black rhino. Have I always wanted to hunt? For as long as I remember, yes, okay? I had a big journey in life. When I was born, we had literally nothing.

SIMON: He told me he grew up in rural Missouri in a small house, then a trailer home. His mom raised the family. His dad loaded trucks at Safeway.

COREY KNOWLTON: Okay? So we're trying to survive as a family.

SIMON: So when Corey was eight ...

COREY KNOWLTON: We left Missouri in a Monte Carlo with $2,500 in the bank and a dream to make it in this world, okay? So by the time I was 15, we had moved all over the United States.

SIMON: His dad picked up jobs in Arizona, Texas.

COREY KNOWLTON: I'm going from school to school to school. I didn't really have the benefit of getting in any sports teams or whatever, but the one thing I did is I had a dad that worked his butt off every day. I didn't get to spend much time with him. So then when we would want to go do things, "Hey Dad, let's go dove hunting. It's dove season," You know, and he loved that.

SIMON: He mentioned this one time when he was 11.

COREY KNOWLTON: We go out. I have a shotgun in my hand. Two doves fly up, and I shoot and both of them die in one shot and fell right there, okay? I went over there, got the doves. I went through cleaning them, okay? And preparing to cook them. And just being in that moment and not worrying about, you know, other problems that we all go through in life, and just having a nice quiet time with my dad. I looked at it as a privilege to go hunting. I didn't look at it like, "Hey, it's my right to go out and take some animal's life." I look at it like this is an awesome opportunity I get to go spend with my dad outside. Now as I became older, I became more interested in hunting. I wanted to learn about bows. I wanted to learn about hunting. I was ate up with it.

SIMON: By the time he was in his mid 20s, he says—and this is right around the time his dad hit it big in the oil industry, he was leading hunts all around the world.

COREY KNOWLTON: From the North Pole to as far south as you could hunt in New Zealand.

SIMON: Nepal.

COREY KNOWLTON: Papua New Guinea. So I've seen the whole world.

SIMON: And he says somewhere in the middle of all of those trips, he realized ...

COREY KNOWLTON: That there's a big fight out there. This large biomass of humanity is taking over the world, and wildlife doesn't exist by accident anymore.

SIMON: And so he started thinking about not just hunting these animals ...

COREY KNOWLTON: But preserving them and keeping them here.

SIMON: All of which is to say, when he won that auction without meaning to and started getting all those death threats, he didn't turn back.

SIMON: What on Earth is keeping you so steadfast in going ahead and doing this? I think I would have thought "[bleep]. I shouldn't have done this."

COREY KNOWLTON: I was willing to do this. And it may have not been what I planned on, but I was willing to do this based on a commitment that I made to a friend. I made a commitment to my family. I made a commitment to conservation as a whole. Look, this was never about me going over and taking a black rhino's life. Like, finally I get to achieve the zenith of life in killing this black rhino. Give me a break! It was about a method of conservation to keep black rhinos on the face of this Earth.

SIMON: You are saying that you're doing this for conservation. Your detractors will say—they will say, "You say you are only doing it for conservation when you are really doing it ..."

COREY KNOWLTON: I was only doing it for conservation.

SIMON: No, I'm not saying that's what you've said. I'm saying this is what they will throw at you. "You are saying you're only doing it for conservation. Well, all you are actually getting out of it is some sort of satisfaction." Can you talk for a minute about ...

COREY KNOWLTON: I can talk for more than a minute about it.

SIMON: Okay.

COREY KNOWLTON: Okay? All right, sure. I enjoy the act of hunting. Can I tell you why? Could I wrap that up in a real pretty burrito for you to be able to eat and understand, and it tastes good? No, but I can tell you that I care about the survival of these species.

SIMON: And do you understand why people have a hard time wrapping their mind around that you believing that and simultaneously wanting to kill an animal? Or does that not compute to you at all?

COREY KNOWLTON: I mean, at what point we're getting redundant. They're missing the whole boat. We don't have one without the other, okay? If we want wildlife to be around for future generations, we have to understand that that wildlife has to have a value. If it doesn't have a value, especially in the continent of Africa, it's gonna be gone.

SIMON: And here he made a sort of economic argument. He said you gotta keep in mind that living next to a black rhino, not just talking about it, but actually living next to a black rhino, it's a nightmare.

COREY KNOWLTON: I mean, who wants to live next door to a raging psychopathic beast that's killing things? No one.

SIMON: So in just very purely economic terms, it has a negative value. But what Corey will tell you, and what conservation organizations like World Wildlife Fund and various others will tell you is by him paying $350,000 to shoot one, he is creating a positive value for that animal. He's creating jobs for game wardens, he's creating jobs for trackers.

COREY KNOWLTON: So you gotta look at the net benefit. It's there.

SIMON: And so what is the common ground here? Because you guys want the same things, and yet there's somehow this ...

COREY KNOWLTON: No, no, no, no, no. We don't want the same things.

SIMON: Conservationists in general do.

COREY KNOWLTON: The common ground has to be: do you or do you not want to see black rhinos on the face of the Earth?

SIMON: And I think everyone agrees that they do, but I think even ...

COREY KNOWLTON: No, they don't.

SIMON: No, I think they do. I ...

COREY KNOWLTON: Because their actions are speaking louder than their words.

SIMON: They're all—I think to a lot of people, there are these neo-colonial sentiments here, that you are this guy who has a lot of money, and you are paying a lot of money to go to Africa to shoot this thing. And I think that—that causes a reaction in certain people. Do you think the amount of money plays into it or no?

COREY KNOWLTON: I'm gonna take a break for one second.

SIMON: Okay.

COREY KNOWLTON: Okay.

SIMON: You can say you don't want to answer anything, or that ...

COREY KNOWLTON: No, I want to give you the best possible answer. Do you understand?

SIMON: No, I do get it.

COREY KNOWLTON: I'm trying, okay? I'm really trying to an emotional level where I'm like, "God dang, man. I want these people to get it so fucking bad." I just don't know if I'm gonna be able to.

SIMON: We can stop.

COREY KNOWLTON: No, you don't have to stop. Just give me a second. And I know that the words that I put out mean something. And I don't want to do a disservice, and I feel like I'm letting people down. And I'm not a radical psychopath. You can see that, okay? It's just something I believe in. I can believe in these animals and I believe that I want them here. But I also understand that death is inevitable, but the death of this species doesn't have to be.

COREY KNOWLTON: And so I'm putting myself through this because I believe in that it's right. Because I've seen that it's right. And I'll go down and I will sit next to people in Africa, both indigenous and non indigenous, that have the exact same belief. And they want these animals. They love them. They want their kids to see it. They know that one night when the stars are above and they're sitting there with their family and a lion roars in the distance, they feel that. They feel what it means to be afraid of it. They feel what it means to respect it. They feel what it means to love it. And they want that to continue. And I want that to continue. And in a realistic view, a realist view, I believe I have a grasp on what it takes for that to continue.

SIMON: Thank you for being so honest there. I don't have any other questions.

COREY KNOWLTON: Okay.

SIMON: So that conversation happened over six months ago. At that point, the hunt was totally in limbo. He was still receiving death threats. Animal welfare organizations like Humane Society of the United States were lobbying and petitioning to try to stop the hunt. And what it all really hinged on was a decision to be made by US Fish and Wildlife. Under the Endangered Species Act, it's illegal to import the carcass of an endangered species into the United States unless you can prove that by killing and importing that animal, you are helping the species as a whole. So that's what US Fish and Wildlife had to decide: would Corey killing and importing that one black rhino help black rhinos as a whole? March went by. April. And then in early May, I got a text from Corey that just read, "Let's talk tomorrow."

JAD: Coming up, we take a trip.

[LISTENER: My name is Courtney and I'm calling from Johannesburg, South Africa. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

[JAD: Science reporting on Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.]

SIMON: All right. We are off the plane, walking into the airport. I suppose this would be the first time we've actually stepped foot in Namibia, the destination.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Back to our reporter Simon Adler.

SIMON: Okay, so days after getting that text message, I land in Namibia, meet back up with Corey.

COREY KNOWLTON: So today, we're in Windhoek, Namibia. It's the 13th of May, 2015. This is Simon's big day to interview local officials, professional hunters and any bum on the street that wants to comment.

SIMON: Well, and how long have we been traveling for?

COREY KNOWLTON: Probably close to, like, 48 hours now.

SIMON: You're—you're feeling all right at this point?

COREY KNOWLTON: A lot better now. Just getting off the plane feeling the wind.

SIMON: The airport is tiny. We get through customs and everything and immediately ...

SIMON: I'm Simon.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: Simon, I'm Hentie. Nice to meet you, man.

SIMON: We're met by the PH, Hentie van Heerden

JAD: The PH?

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: I am a professional hunter.

SIMON: The professional hunter.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: Requested by Corey Knowlton to assist him on his hunt.

SIMON: He's sort of the manager of this entire project. Big dude, scraggly beard, short shorts.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: We need to go and pick up our stuff.

SIMON: He leads us out of the airport.

SIMON: So what does the day's agenda hold for us?

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: Sort chaos out.

SIMON: Sorting chaos out.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: [laughs] Your chaos just started, my friend.

SIMON: So we get in his truck, start driving.

SIMON: Do you mind if I ask you some questions while we drive here?

COREY KNOWLTON: Bring it on!

SIMON: And I immediately just realize what a headache putting all this together has been for him.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: Oh, ten million phone calls, meetings after meetings with the Minister of Environment and Tourism. Head office, checking with local officers.

SIMON: All to help them figure out which is the best rhino for Corey to shoot.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: So they had their list.

SIMON: So how many—at this point, do you know exactly which one you'll be going after, or are there a couple?

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: The main place we've identified, there is two rhinos we can remove from that area.

SIMON: Both male. Aggressive, post reproductive.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: We're gonna try to get on one of these two animals and try to remove it as professionally as we can possibly do.

SIMON: So we're at the Ministry of Environment and Tourism. There's apparently a meet and greet. Later that day, we stop to shake hands with the Permanent Secretary Simeon Negumbo. He gives this kind of prepared speech about how trophy hunting is a big part of why Namibia is considered the gold standard of conservation in Africa.

SIMEON NEGUMBO: This program assists us to have wildlife growing. Previously, our wildlife was almost declining. Like, elephants were less than 1,000. But now we have plenty of them. We don't know where to put them. [laughs] So there are many now.

COREY KNOWLTON: So you've been so successful that you have to deal with a surplus?

SIMEON NEGUMBO: Yeah. All type of species, they are growing fast.

SIMON: Fast forward to the next morning …

COREY KNOWLTON: It's 4:46 am. I doubt that Simon nor I got any sleep last night.

SIMON: Despite all that ...

COREY KNOWLTON: [singing] "Someone's gonna get hurt before you're through." [laughs]

SIMON: ... he was in high spirits.

COREY KNOWLTON: [singing] "I woke up this morning, it was drizzling rain. Around the curve came a passenger train." First thing bringing down to the truck is a firearm and ammunition, big knives and things, so we can skin another rhino.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: Morning, morning. How are you?

SIMON: Hentie was on the phone taking care of final details. And much to my chagrin, there was this crew of CNN reporters hanging around.

HENTIE VAN HEERDEN: [laughs]

SIMON: Once everything was loaded, we took off for the airport.

SIMON: Should I leave you here, Cory?

COREY KNOWLTON: Yeah.

SIMON: And I waved them off.

SIMON: Okay. Happy hunting. Good luck.

COREY KNOWLTON: All right. Thanks, man.

JAD: You what?

ROBERT: What was that again?

JAD: You waved—I don't understand.

SIMON: I—I wasn't able to go on the rhino hunt itself.

JAD: What?

SIMON: I know, I know.

JAD: Are you serious?

SIMON: You seem disappointed.

JAD: What happened?

SIMON: Number one, a hunting party can only be so large in Namibia, and with these three CNN guys there, the party was just full.

ROBERT: Aww.

JAD: Hmm.

SIMON: But you also have to understand ...

JAD: CNN!

SIMON: I was in the country illegally. I had no press pass. I had no press visa. So this was like, oh, I've got to keep my head down.

JAD: Yeah, that is our fault. So are you telling me the story is over? Is that what you're basically saying?

SIMON: No, no, no. Don't worry. Corey's personal cameraman, he promised to give me all of his audio. So we do have the audio, and we'll get to that. But while they were headed up north, I actually ended up going east. And where I went totally unexpectedly made this model of conservation and how it works, like, really finally click into place for me.

SIMON: Do you mind just telling me your name and where we are?

ANDRÉ SWANEPOEL: Oh, my name is André Swanepoel.

ESTELLE SWANEPOEL: My name is Estelle Swanepool.

ANDRÉ SWANEPOEL: I'm sort of the owner of these concerns.

ESTELLE SWANEPOEL: I'm going to keep you company.

SIMON: All right. Sounds good.

SIMON: André and Estelle Swanepoel own the Aru Game Farms, which are a series of huge swaths of land that they fenced in. In total, they have, like, over 200 square miles of land that actually used to be filled with cattle.

ESTELLE SWANEPOEL: And 15, 16 years ago, we converted into a game farm.

SIMON: Basically, they decided to get rid of all the cattle and bring in all these animals. They've got giraffes, they've got two different species of zebra, wildebeest, hartebeests[00:35:00.13]. In all, they've got 29 different species, including ...

SIMON: How many black rhino are on the property here?

ANDRÉ SWANEPOEL: Up until about three weeks ago, they were 10, and now we've got 11.

SIMON: One of the hunting guides, Steph ...

STEPH JOUBERT: Steph Joubert at Aro Game Lodges in Namibia.

SIMON: ... told me that they actually just had a rhino born on the property. And in fact, they've had several throughout the years born on this property. And he took me out to find one.

STEPH JOUBERT: We're gonna look for signs and keep our eyes peeled.

SIMON: So what should I be looking for if I'm gonna be of any help here?

STEPH JOUBERT: Yeah, in the distance, it'll just look like a big gray rock. You really gotta have a keen eye.

SIMON: We're driving through this really tall, thick grass that kind of enveloped the car. It was almost like we were driving through a cloud.

STEPH JOUBERT: This is the Kalari sour grass. It's real thick. It's almost like the mice can run on top of it.

SIMON: And after searching and searching and searching ...

STEPH JOUBERT: We've just spotted the rhino.

SIMON: Oh, shit! There it is!

SIMON: Like, a hundred yards away.

SIMON: Oh, man! Okay.

STEPH JOUBERT: Okay.

SIMON: Shit, it's pointing at us.

STEPH JOUBERT: He's noticed us now. He's probably heard the vehicle. So, you know, we're still at a very safe distance. I want to get us into the shade and then we can have a closer look, and you can put the binoculars up and take a real good look at him.

SIMON: Oh, man! Looking through the binoculars, and he's just pointed straight at us. His head's moving left to right. Left to right.

STEPH JOUBERT: I think this is a bull, by the looks of things.

SIMON: God, it looks like a dinosaur, doesn't it?

STEPH JOUBERT: It is a very prehistoric looking animal.

JAD: He knew you were there?

SIMON: Oh, yeah. He was totally looking at us.

SIMON: I'm gonna put the binoculars on and see. He's trotting away from us.

SIMON: It started moving away from us. And they've got these tiny looking legs, so when they run, they have to kind of shuffle along.

STEPH JOUBERT: I think if the grass wasn't here, you'd laugh at him. The way they move, it's quite comical. Very lucky to have found one.

SIMON: Jesus!

SIMON: So we were tailing behind it, and the crazy thing is this huge animal that weighs, like, over a ton ...

SIMON: Oh, and it is on the move.

SIMON: ... this thing can move, like, 30 miles per hour.

STEPH JOUBERT: We're currently driving at about 15 kilometers an hour and he's getting away from us.

SIMON: Kind of left us behind.

STEPH JOUBERT: So he wants nothing to do with us. He's moving off.

SIMON: At one point before it took off, we actually got close enough that with the binoculars on, Steph was able to get a good look at its ear.

STEPH JOUBERT: The bulls that were put here initially have all got earmarks, and this one doesn't actually have an earmark in it. So perhaps this one was born on this property.

SIMON: So how does that work? How did the rhinos get to be on this property?

STEPH JOUBERT: The Ministry of Environment and Tourism had been in touch with the owner of Aru Game Lodges.

SIMON: Government said, "Hey, you've got all this land. Will you take a couple of these rhinos and protect them for us?" And they said, "Sure."

STEPH JOUBERT: You know, we started off with a couple, three rhino, and the numbers grew.

SIMON: And it becomes this, like, strange foster care-type situation.

STEPH JOUBERT: Yeah. Each year we have to take photos of them, and we build up a portfolio and then we can send it into MET.

SIMON: It's interesting that, like, they are breeding here, so there are more of them now than there would have been if they hadn't been moved here, yeah?

STEPH JOUBERT: Yes, exactly. And another thing, we were unlucky last year. We actually—we lost two rhinos.

SIMON: Steph said he wanted to show me something. Drove for about 10 minutes, then he stopped the car at this small clearing. Almost no grass, one lone tree.

STEPH JOUBERT: Kind of an eerie feeling. That's what I sort of feel when I stumble across this place.

SIMON: Oh, man. And can you just describe what we're looking at right here?

STEPH JOUBERT: Bones scattered all over the red sand of the Kolari.

SIMON: Bleached white bones against red, red sand.

STEPH JOUBERT: See the femur? We can see some parts of the spine as well.

SIMON: Is that a rhino skull?

STEPH JOUBERT: Yeah. The size of it is just unreal.

SIMON: Wow!

STEPH JOUBERT: You see that there?

SIMON: We got out of the car and, like, actually, like, held these bones.

STEPH JOUBERT: Oh, God.

SIMON: Wow. How did that happen?

STEPH JOUBERT: It was the dominant bull. He was fighting with a younger bull.

SIMON: The two squared off and the older one ended up goring the younger one with its horn, or at least we think.

STEPH JOUBERT: Unfortunately, the young bull passed away.

SIMON: So it killed it?

STEPH JOUBERT: Yeah.

SIMON: Then this older bull that had just killed the younger one, Steph told me it then went up to this female.

STEPH JOUBERT: Wanted to reproduce, and the young female wasn't ready. She wasn't mature enough yet.

SIMON: He kept forcing himself on her over and over.

STEPH JOUBERT: Until she couldn't any longer. I guess that would happen in nature as well. It's just unfortunate that it had to be here. So yeah, they would have been even more, but nature took its course. We didn't get involved. That's how it is.

SIMON: Steph explained to me that it was these type of black rhinos, these older, aggressive bulls that get a auctioned up for guys like Corey to come over and shoot.

STEPH JOUBERT: And then all the money that's been paid for it is going back, all going back into anti-poaching units, it's going back into conserving rhinos. And it's nice to see such a large sum of money coming in for a good cause.

SIMON: So he believes in this program.

STEPH JOUBERT: But personally, I'd never be able to shoot a black rhino.

SIMON: And why—what about you personally wouldn't shoot a rhino?

STEPH JOUBERT: For me, I can't really explain why. I don't know. It's difficult to say. But no, it doesn't tickle me.

SIMON: Over the next couple days at the lodge, as I was hanging out with kind of these tourists from all over the world who had come here to be wined and dined, and then go out and shoot stuff in the morning and afternoon, Steph's ambivalence started to make a deep sort of sense to me.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Tomi tomi tomi tomi tomi tomi tomi.

SIMON: For instance, I spent a lot of time with this guy.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Stefan Lindstrom. I'm from Sweden.

SIMON: Middle aged. There with his family on vacation.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: We decided six years ago that we will go to Africa, so I'm very happy to be here today.

SIMON: This is six years in the making for you?

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Yeah, you can say so.

SIMON: He works in Volvo's corporate office, and he's a big trophy hunter.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Maybe I should show you some pictures from my home.

SIMON: Do you have lots on the wall already?

STEFAN LINDSTROM: At home it's 30. And after the camp, we have at least 50 more.

SIMON: I got to follow him on a few hunts, him and his guide.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: My name is Benjamin Scraver. Scraver is my surname.

SIMON: On one of the hunts, we spent about two and a half hours searching for different animals, stalking different animals. And then in the distance ...

STEFAN LINDSTROM: We saw a very nice water buck bull there.

SIMON: We finally found a water buck.

JAD: Which is what?

SIMON: It's kind of like a reindeer, but it has these two big long horns that kind of shoot backwards, almost like spears.

SIMON: Big animal.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Yeah, big animal. I just do not know how old he is. So we're just going in close and see.

SIMON: We hop down from the car, and just start kind of slowly moving towards it through the grass. STEFAN LINDSTROM: This type of animal is the top for me this weekend and this holiday.

SIMON: Stefan told me he had a list of animals he was hoping to shoot, and this was at the top of it.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: This one, I think it's such a beautiful big animal. That's why.

SIMON: The game lodge charges $2,800 to shoot one.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Okay, the water buck is here, sir.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Okay.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Okay, let's go and see.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Okay.

SIMON: [whispers] So at the moment there's light wind. We're walking through shin-length grass. There are shrubs to the left and the right.

SIMON: Every, like, 10 minutes, we'd stop to measure how far away it was.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: It's about 600 meters. It will take about 20 minutes to come rather close to them.

SIMON: Okay. Just wait.

SIMON: Eventually we got just a couple hundred feet away from it. The animal's off in the distance, it's just kind of pacing. Ben pulls out this tripod, sets it up. And Stefan gets into position.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: He's standing behind. No, no, no. Stop, stop. Please stop.

[gunshot]

STEFAN LINDSTROM: That's the right one?

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Yep.

SIMON: The buck stumbles a few paces.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: I mean, he's down.

SIMON: Falls down. But then it gets right back up and stumbles forward.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Put another bullet in.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: I haven't. No need.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Just one.

SIMON: The first shot didn't kill it.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: I was needing to shoot rather high because it was a lot of grass.

SIMON: At this point, Ben seems tense.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: He doesn't like that, I think.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: I don't care.

SIMON: Because, like, he knows that the animal is suffering. So the dog takes off, runs after it and just keeps it at bay by kind of circling it. And we start moving towards it.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Okay, sir?

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Please.

[gunshot]

SIMON: Again, second shot doesn't kill it. Falls down, gets back up, falls down again.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: It's over.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Please don't! Shit!

SIMON: [whispers] It's writhing in the grass.

SIMON: Ben now seems pretty upset.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: I don't know where you shot it the first time, but ...

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Uh, rather high. He's looking at the right.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Yeah.

[gunshot]

SIMON: And the third shot doesn't kill it.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Sweet. Fuck. This is not fun. This is not fun.

BENJAMIN SCRAVER: Maybe shoot him in the neck?

STEFAN LINDSTROM: I will try.

[gunshot]

SIMON: Finally, fourth shot, it goes limp.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Damn. There are so many shots!

SIMON: It's lying on the ground. Its leg is still kicking a little bit, but it is—it's done.

STEFAN LINDSTROM: Oh, it's so nice. I am so happy. I'm so happy. This was the top of the list for me this weekend. So this hunt is perfect. It's very nice feelings.

SIMON: So seeing it up close, it can be emotionally difficult, but when you pan out, it's pretty clear. The numbers show that this Namibian model is working. Wildlife numbers on private land have gone up by almost 80 percent since the government allowed people to buy, sell and shoot wildlife on their land. And since trophy hunting of the black rhino was legalized, that population has grown by, like, 30 percent. But ...

RICHARD LEAKEY: In front of my face.

SIMON: ... not all African conservationists are on board. I talked to a guy named Richard Leakey, super famous anthropologist who also directed Kenya's wildlife program for a while. And I asked him.

SIMON: What is your stance on this idea of sustainable use of wildlife?

RICHARD LEAKEY: Listen to me, I think it's utterly ridiculous. You know, if a father can't afford to pay school fees for his children, does he say to somebody, "You can rape my daughter so I can get the money to pay for her school fees?" I mean, I think we've got to set some standards in life, and I think this is nonsense what this argument is about killing wild animals so that they can be looked after absolutely sends the wrong message.

SIMON: This was the big issue he took with Namibia's strategy.

RICHARD LEAKEY: Yes, you can afford to lose five rhinos from a breeding perspective, but does that send a right message?

SIMON: He then told me a story about when he took over Kenya's wildlife service in 1989. At the time, things were dire.

RICHARD LEAKEY: Elephants were being killed at an alarming number, and we were going to lose our elephants totally.

SIMON: Poaching was on the rise, and his predecessors had actually confiscated a huge number of elephant tusks from these poachers.

RICHARD LEAKEY: Twelve tons. Twelve tons. If you saw it, you thought, "That's a lot of ivory."

SIMON: And they recommended to him, sell this ivory, make about $3 million, and then use that money to help fight poaching. But Leakey said no. What he did instead was he built a giant tower out of that ivory.

RICHARD LEAKEY: And set fire to it.

[NEWS CLIP: Millions of dollars in ivory, taken by poachers, burned.]

[NEWS CLIP: More than 12 tons of contraband elephant tusks.]

[NEWS CLIP: Twelve tons of illegally poached ivory worth several million dollars.]

RICHARD LEAKEY: It burned for three days. It got television, it got newspaper, it got magazine, it got radio.

SIMON: It was this massive PR stunt to draw the world's attention to the plight of elephants. And part of what he was saying in that was, like, we have to value these things beyond their dollar value. We have to respect the intrinsic value of these creatures.

JAD: But wait a second. If you're burning a bunch of ivory, aren't you, in effect, increasing the value of the ivory because now there's just less of it out there?

SIMON: Well, so you're looking at the supply end of it, right? Yes, by reducing supply, that would push up price. Leakey was attacking the demand side.

RICHARD LEAKEY: What an impact it had around the world. Opinion changed overnight.

SIMON: He said it woke the public up. People stopped buying ivory, and the market for ivory, it just crashed.

RICHARD LEAKEY: Up to that time, we'd been losing about three and a half thousand elephants to four thousand elephants a year. And a year later, we were losing at most, 60.

SIMON: Really?

RICHARD LEAKEY: It had an enormous impact, my friend. Getting a public that supports conservation of wildlife, that's a huge challenge. And we just can't afford, I think, to send out the wrong messages.

SIMON: But the problem with that is finding the right message is getting harder and harder. I called various conservation organizations, and one guy who I talked to told me that their average age of donor is getting older, more and more people are just living in cities. Less people are having positive experiences in the natural world at a young age. And so he said that they're going to have to continue focusing on people, focusing on us. This message of what does wildlife give us, what does it do for people?

COREY KNOWLTON: This is our third day up in the area. Still no luck, and we're just gonna keep at it.

SIMON: Back in Namibia, after three days of bushwhacking through this dense vegetation up in the north of the country, Corey and his crew finally got on the tracks of the right rhino.

COREY KNOWLTON: The local guy says we found a rhino that had killed another rhino that had killed another rhino. So we're gonna follow this one, make a hundred percent sure that it's the right one, and then we'll try to take it if we can.

SIMON: So for the next couple hours, they track the animal, looking for, basically, footprints, anywhere that it had marked its territory.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: So we've been tracking this thing for probably a couple hours now. We've bumped it at least twice.]

COREY KNOWLTON: We had walked at this point, just about 12 miles. It was very hot.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: You can see how thick it is right here. Pretty tense.]

SIMON: The grass was so thick that they really couldn't see more than about 30 feet in front of them. And eventually they find ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: You can see this is the rhinos.]

SIMON: ... a pile of rhino feces that's still warm.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: It's still very moist. This means it's fright—we're not more than an hour behind that animal right there, and you can see the dun beetles and everything in it.]

COREY KNOWLTON: And so ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Hentie van Heerden: This animal's already angry.]

COREY KNOWLTON: ... we sat there for a few minutes, right? Gathered our thoughts.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Hentie van Heerden: There's not a single gun that can ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: So then let's you line it out. We're gonna do what you say.]

COREY KNOWLTON: And then ...

SIMON: About two hours later ...

COREY KNOWLTON: I heard some noise from my left. All's I see is a running beast with a giant saber on its head.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: Right there. Right there. right there. [bleep]!

[gunshot]

COREY KNOWLTON: It was like lightning.

[gunshots]

JAD: So he also didn't get it with the first shot.

SIMON: The first several shots did not kill this thing. It ran off, and then they had to start tracking it again.

ROBERT: Was it just wounded, or ...?

COREY KNOWLTON: Yes. We followed it, I would say 10 minutes. I don't know. I looked over there. I saw it.

SIMON: Was it lying down at this point?

COREY KNOWLTON: It was standing up, but it had already fallen down twice. It was dying. And then I shot it a few more times. The last thing you do is once you're really assured it's dead, you touch its eye and if it doesn't blink, it's gone.

ROBERT: So did you go touch its eye?

COREY KNOWLTON: Absolutely.

ROBERT: In a moment like that, is there some sort—is there a conversation going on now that the animal is dead and you're not?

COREY KNOWLTON: No. We just kind of looked at everybody, looked at each other and made sure we were okay. There wasn't a whole lot of talk right then in this case, but it was an emotional moment for me.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: So the meat, we've been sitting here skinning this animal so far this morning, and now we're about to roll it over, skin the other side, and then just take the quarters off just like any other animal that you would if you were on a hunting trip.]

SIMON: They loaded up all the meat to be shipped off to a local village, and they kept a little bit of it for themselves.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Corey Knowlton: So cooking my first piece of black rhino meat here on the coals next to the carcass. Right here's the moment when everybody here has started eating some of this black rhino. So it's just a part of hunting and a part of being a human. So it's a pretty unique and awesome moment right here.]

ROBERT: I'm not really morally outraged by it—maybe I am a little. But I think you might be vulnerable if you insist that your enthusiasm for hunting is part of the balance of nature. But I think it's perfectly ...

COREY KNOWLTON: Robert, you don't have those canine teeth for eating salad. And I understand that people don't like it any more than they wouldn't like going and killing the lamb of the lamb chops they eat. But that doesn't mean that it's wrong. Hunting, it's part of who we are. Now it may be a bigger part of who I am than you are, and that's fine, but when wildlife populations abound is when they're managed by human beings.

ROBERT: The alternate model might be a view of humans that's different from yours. I think you assume that because we are smart and because there are so many of us, that inevitably we will bump into them, and when we do, we will win. And thus your calculations. The alternate model might be that because we are smart, we might create a space where we won't bump into them.

COREY KNOWLTON: Now you're not in the real world. We're dealing not in reality. Okay, I'm living in a world that matters and that's real. So it's not a dream scenario, and it's not saying, "Okay. Well, let's just create this." Unfortunately, these animals don't have that time. So I'm not trying to outsmart anybody. It's just a traditional method that's worked. And until somebody comes up with a methodology that we could look at and say, "this is a better way," I'm gonna continue to fight and believe in the traditional model. So now we're gonna ask ourselves these questions: how do we really, on an individual basis, value this animal's survival on earth? Do you really value it? Do you value it past making 75 characters into your iPhone and tweeting about it? Do you value it past watching Animal Planet? To me, I know, and I care. And I placed an extreme value, financially, physically, emotionally, on the survival of the black rhino.

JAD: Reporter and producer Simon Adler. We had considerable production support for this piece from Matthew Kielty, who also contributed some original music. Special thanks to Chris Weaver, Ian Wallace, Mark Barrow, Ryan Tarbert, the Lindstrom family and everyone at the Aru Game Lodge in Namibia.

[LISTENER: Hi, my name is Mish Rogers. I'm calling from Kansas City, Missouri. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Our staff includes Brenna Farrell, Ellen Horne, David Gebel, Dylan Keefe, Matt Kielty, Andy Mills, Latif Nasser, Kelsey Padgett, Arianne Wack, Molly Webster, Soren Wheeler and Jamie York. With help from Molly McBride-Jacobson, Alexandra Leigh Young and Simon Adler. Our fact-checkers are Eva Dasher and Michelle Harris.]

 

-30-

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

 

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.