04 Track 4

Unit 11

Wildlife Conservation

Chapter 2

Rhino Wars

Page 195

Rhino Wars

Rivaling the price of gold on the black market, rhino horn is at the center of a bloodied poaching battle.

The rifle shot boomed through the dark forest just as Damien Mander arrived at his campfire after a long day training game ranger recruits in Zimbabwe’s Nakavango game reserve.

“There, near the eastern boundary,” he pointed. He and his rangers grabbed their guns, radios, and medical kits. They then drove into the night, hoping to cut off the shooter.

And so goes the night on the front lines of southern Africa’s ruthless rhino war, which is seen more than a thousand rhinos killed since 2006. At the bloody heart of this conflict is the rhino’s horn, a prized ingredient in traditional Asian medicine.

Prices range from $33 to $133 a gram, which at the top end is double the price of gold.

Although the range of the two African species, the white rhino and its smaller cousin, the black rhino has been reduced primarily to southern Africa and Kenya, their populations had shown signs of improvement.

In 2007 white rhinos numbered 17,470, while blacks had nearly doubled to 4,230 since the mid ’90s.

For conservationists these numbers represented a triumph. In the 1970s and 80s, poaching had devastated the two species. Then China banned rhino horn from traditional medicine, and Yemen forbade its use in ceremonial knife handles.

All signs pointed to better days. But in 2008 the number of poached rhinos in South Africa shot up to 83, from just 13 and 2007.

By 2010 the figure had soared to 333, followed by over 400 in 2011. Most of the horn trade was found to lead to Southeast Asia.

Javan rhinos once roamed Vietnam’s forests. Cat Tien in southern Vietnam was established in 1998 from three existing protected areas, partly to protect local rhinos.

A number of local wildlife conservation groups, working closely with the Vietnam government, have tried to prevent the species from dying out.

They achieved some early successes in halting illegal hunting, but were no match for the poachers. In 2010, the body of what many believe to be the last wild rhino in Vietnam was found.

It had a bullet in its leg and its horn had been removed. Even with the rhinos gone, rhino horn can still be found in Vietnam. This is because South African law, which complies with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), allows the rhino’s horn to be exported illegally as a trophy.

In 2003, a lone hunter killed a rhino on a legal safari in South Africa and brought it back to Asia. Dozens of poachers soon followed, each paying $50,000 for a hunt.

It seems like a lot to pay, but a pair of horns can be sold on the black market for much more and may net poachers as much as $200,000 in profits.

Many officials in Vietnam are fighting back against reports that the country is the name market for rhino horn, stating that rhino horn bound for Vietnam is nearly in transit for another country.

Don Quang Tang, deputy director of CITES managing Authority in Vietnam, said the country “could not be the name market for South African rhino horn,” claiming that the majority in Vietnamese people would not be able to afford rhino horn.

Even if there is an emerging group of people who can afford it, he thinks it is too small to make the country a significant consumer. Professor Dang Huy Huynh, chairman of the Vietnam Zoological Society, says that rhino horn has never been a popular ingredient in traditional medicine.

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the horns alleged healing power for at least 2,000 years, Asian medicine has prescribed rhino horn to reduce fever and treat a range of illnesses that the handful of studies conducted on its fever reducing properties has proven inconclusive.

The newest rumor is that it cures cancer, but doctors say the proof is nonexistent, no research has been published on the horn’s efficacy as a cancer treatment. But even if rhino horn is not an effective cure for anything, let alone cancer, that doesn’t mean it has no effect, says Mary Hardy, medical director of Simms/Mann UCLA Center for integrative Oncology.

“Belief in a treatment, especially one that is wildly expensive and hard to get, can have a powerful effect on how the patient feels,” she says.

In any event, John Hume believes no rhinos need to die to supply the rhino horn to those who want it. The 69-year-old entrepreneur has announced one of the largest privately owned rhino herds in the world, and currently has more than 700 rhinos on two farms in South Africa.

“We take wool from sheep, why not horn from rhinos?” he asks. “If you cut the horn about three inches above its base, it will grow back in two years. That means there is a never ending supply of rhino horn.”

Hume suggests harvesting rhino horn is the next step in preserving the animals. Conservationists argue that legalizing rhino horn won’t change the essential economics of poaching − that poached horn is always going to be cheaper than farmed horn. Hume disagrees:

As buyers become confident in the availability of legal horn, prices will fall, which will prompt crime syndicates to leave the business.

“The fundamental difference is that poachers go after rhino horn for easy short-term profit. Farmers are in it for years of steady returns.”