![]() These were (1) that the reversal of the trade moratorium was inconsequential on rhino horn poaching outcomes and (2) that institutional failure in biodiversity governance is the underlying problem in the rhino horn-poaching crisis. It also posed a significant question that underpinned the court’s reasoning and answered it with two obiter dicta. The South Africa High Court ruling, which was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court, demonstrates paradoxes of policymaking in the presence of ‘wicked policy’ problems. The final section summarises the arguments made and offers some concluding reflective remarks, along with the beginnings of some proposed remedies. Unintended economic and ecological consequences from the ruling are highlighted in the following section. Section 3 deploys a simple theoretical sketch to tease out what are very restrictive implicit assumptions in the court ruling to lift the moratorium. The next section sets out the legal arguments deployed in effecting a reversal of the rhino horn domestic trade moratorium in South Africa. This paper is organized in the following manner. This paper suggests that the decision of the South African court to reverse a 7-year domestic trade moratorium in rhino horns does not feature any marks of a decision process that was meaningfully informed by a transdisciplinary understanding of the rhino poaching crisis. The capacity to develop adequate institutional services depends on the rigour of the proposed solutions, which in turn depends on transdisciplinary understanding (ecological, economic, institutional, educational, community development etc.) of the dynamics of the poaching crises. A biological asset that does not earn a competitive return to warrant allocation of services and life-support resources to its cause will likely experience disinvestment and stock mining. Since institutional services are scarce resources and base resources (habitat) are likewise scarce, they have many alternative human uses. This includes biological asset disinvestment, reallocation of institutional (management) services away from the biological asset and reallocation of habitat (land, water) from the biological asset to alternative biological assets (or other human activities) that have a higher return (Kontoleon et al. The apparent fundamental problem of exclusion of species from a society’s portfolio of biological assets may lead to various outcomes. Wicked problems, therefore, require consensus building and the use of transdisciplinary processes (ecological, economic, community development, education and training development) for the setting up of reasonable and functional governance regimes. Characteristically among such problems are divergent ideologies and solution positions that several different interest groups put forward. Any linear and deterministic solution will have several perverse consequences. Wicked policy problems have been described as being not resolvable by linear, deterministic and uni-disciplinary solutions because there is no obvious identifiable best approach to resolving them (Gray and Gill 2009 Hartmann 2012 Rittel and Webber 1973). The governance of biodiversity, and in the context of this study, specifically white and black rhinos ( Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis respectively), can be formally conceived of as a ‘wicked policy’ problem.
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