In 2022, poachers in Namibia had taken 14 white rhinos from private farms in six weeks, so farm owners started removing their horns. That can take away the incentive to hunt the animals, because poachers want the horns. One cow had a horn 34 inches long.
Jaco Muller, an antelope breeder, said he was nearly in tears when it was removed. The idea for breeding rhinos came from his son, then 15, as a school project. In 2010, Muller converted the family’s breeding operation into what became the Rhino Momma Project in Namibia’s Kunene region.
Muller believed that breeding more white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum), keeping them secure enough to reproduce, and then replenishing populations across Africa could help save the species. So he built a breeding program with a rhino-custodianship farm and the nonprofit Help Our Rhinos Now, or Horn. The first calf was born in 2013; by 2025, the project had become one of Namibia’s larger privately run rhino-breeding operations.
Kifaru Lodge, which Muller opened in 2018, brought in money from tourists to help cover security and rhino care. Muller also supported legalizing the trade in rhino horn. His argument was that prohibition let criminals collect the profits while farm owners and conservation groups paid for security.
He compared harvesting horn to shearing sheep: The animal would survive, the horn would grow back and a regulated market might finance protection. That was, and remains, a controversial argument. Opponents question whether a legal trade would enable laundering of poached rhino horns or increase demand.
For Muller, the case came from the economics of a breeding program: horns were valuable, and protecting the animals was expensive. He believed rhinos needed populations outside Namibia as well. In a controversial move in 2024, 42 white rhinos from Kifaru Lodge were exported to Texas.
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