"See the horns on that one," game farmer Richard Horsley says admiringly, pointing to a large male nyala, one of 10 coarse-haired African antelope waiting to go on the block at the Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife game auction in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi regional park in northern KwaZulu- Natal. "They've got a nice turn to them and they're spread nice and far, tip to tip. That's a beauty." "Very symmetrical," agrees a friend. I want to show off my animal knowledge, so I break in: "The horns are a good indicator of the animal's health, no?" The men turn and stare. "I'm not sure about their health," Horsley says finally. "It just looks good on a wall."

It may be hard to believe, but an auction that turns nyalas into trophies is actually a sign of how game conservation is working in South Africa. Although poaching remains a huge problem in places like Angola and Zimbabwe, in South Africa, conservation efforts have been so successful that game parks have sometimes been overrun by animals. In 1989, to manage the problem without culling, the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi park launched this auction — South Africa's biggest — which attracts game-preserve owners, hunters and conservationists, who come to buy animals as big as giraffes or as small as the groundhog-like rock hyraxes known as dassies.

"Game farming is the way ahead," says Horsley, who runs a 3,000-hectare game farm nearby. Like many South African farmers, he's moving into raising game after a career spent farming more traditional animals; in his case, cattle. Game animals are much easier to look after. "The animals just get on

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) with it," says Jeff Gaisford, media manager with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, which runs some 100 parks in the province and organizes the auction. Some farmers offer tourists game drives and walks, others offer hunting safaris. Some even offer both — though not at the same time. The industry is now worth about $140 million a year, according to the local Northern Game Ranchers' Association.

Game animals in southern Africa are traded much the same as any other goods, and the Ezemvelo auction sets the standard for prices every year. Game-park ranchers fly in from as far away as Texas — and even though some, perhaps as many as half, of the animals are destined to become trophies, it's an improvement over the 1980s, when, as Gaisford says, "we were shooting up to 300 head of nyalas and impalas a night. For men who spent their lives protecting those animals, it was pretty soul destroying." By selling these animals instead of killing them, the government parks are raising money to help fund conservation.

The auction goes on for hours with buyers and onlookers regularly wandering out for a beer or boerewors sausage. This year, it becomes quickly apparent, the bottom is falling out of the rhino market, perhaps because visiting hunters pay in U.S. dollars, and local buyers are cautious about exchange-rate losses with such a strong South African rand, which has risen by almost 100% against the dollar since January 2002. After all the ostriches, impalas, kudu, warthogs, springbok, giraffes, hippos, zebras and waterbuck are sold, the auction has raised $1.5 million, well down on last year's $3.3 million, but a sign that conservation efforts are working. Says Gaisford: "As people stock their farms, demand is bound to go down."

I decide a straightforward approach to buyers is safest. Rob Le Sueur, owner of Nambiti Game Conservancy, four hours' drive west, is with his manager Mark Hamsmeyer, checking out two white rhino. They are looking for rhino and hippos to stock their new park. "What do you look for in a hippo?" I ask, figuring that I can't go wrong with a simple question. Then I notice that strange unblinking look again. "Not a hell of a lot," Le Sueur says. "Other than it looks like one and is one."

• SIMON ROBINSON | KwaZulu-Natal
• Believe it or not, South Africa's biggest game auction is a boon to conservation