Getting to the rhinos, which George referred as “the mine” (as in a gold mine) involved about a 10 km, 3 hour walk over the Mozambican border and into the Kruger National Park (KNP) in South Africa. In George's words, “We wanted money so we went to Kruger looking for rhinos…”. 458 rifle Eli carried an axe and Morris carried food. On an October morning in 2013, three men (I call them George, Eli, and Morris to protect them) departed a rural village in Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP) on foot. Rhinos as “The Mine” and the Fugitive Meanings of Illegal Wildlife Hunting. Keywords: illegal wildlife hunting, more-than-economic meanings, conservation by dispossession, salvage accumulation, peripheral labour, Kruger and Limpopo National Parks Improved understandings of people's motivations to hunt wildlife illegally necessitate theorisations that are more explicitly co-produced, derived from and responsive to the people living (and dying) with conservation by dispossession. The killing of protected wildlife to trade in their parts enables hunters to extract money, cultural continuity, and dignity from the very processes that impoverish and dispossess them. In the post-colonial context, the protection of threatened species forecloses opportunities for migrant labour and generates the need for “peripheral” or illegal labour. When dispossessed mine labourers developed the wealth of southern African colonial states, they salvaged for themselves, economic benefits, status, and dignity. In the transfrontier region comprising the Kruger and Limpopo National Parks, men have responded to colonial and post-colonial dispossession through institutions of migrant labour. Yet, the provocation of one convicted hunter, who referred to rhinos as “the mine” (as in a gold mine) reveals complicated meanings underneath and adjoined to monetary explanations. The amount of money illegal hunters can extract from the lethal trade in rhinoceros' horn is extraordinary. Most scholarship and policy documentation that examines the problem of “rhino poaching” assumes that the potential for economic gain drives impoverished people to hunt threatened and endangered wildlife illegally.

Rhinoceros hunt