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Geoff York
This image shows a de-horned white rhino and its calf. A new paper argues that humanely harvesting rhino horn could save the animals from extinction.
Surging demand for rhino horn to decorate daggers and treat everything from hangovers to cancer is driving the iconic animals to the brink of extinction. The only way to save them is to humanely harvest rhino horn and sell it legally, scientists argue in a controversial new paper.
Only 5,000 black rhinos and 20,000 white rhinos remain, mostly in South Africa and Namibia, the scientists note. The western black rhino was declared extinct in 2011.
The paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, is a bid to spark "serious discussions around establishing a legal trade" at an international conference on the trade in endangered species that starts Sunday in Bangkok, lead author Duan Biggs told NBC News.
Edna Molewa, South Africa's water and environment affairs minister, told reporters Thursday that the government would consider "extraordinary measures" to save the rhino from poaching, including a legal trade.
"We have been given a mandate by Cabinet not to close our ears to potential and possible trading in rhino horn," she said, and at this year’s conference, South Africa "would listen and gather as much information as possible" on what should be done about trading, Business Day reported.
Humane trade
Trade in rhino horn was banned under the Convention on the Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) in 1977. Since then, demand for the horn has been met by poachers, who typically kill the rhinos before hacking off their horns.
Just days after Rock Center aired Harry Smith's report, "The Last Stand," on the growing epidemic of illegal rhino poaching in South Africa, three of the rhinos featured in the report were attacked by poachers. Rock Center's Harry Smith reports.
"The trade ban restricts supply and that pushes up the price of horn, which increases incentives for poaching and has caused skyrocketing poaching levels," said Biggs, who is a researcher at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Environmental Reporting.
Today’s street value of rhino horn is about $65,000 per kilogram (2.2 pounds), making it worth more by weight than gold, diamonds, or cocaine, according to the paper. As a result of the high prices, the number of rhinos poached has more than doubled each year over the past five years.
Biggs and colleagues argue that the demand for horn can be met by legally shaving horn from a herd of about 5,000 live animals kept on private conservation lands in South Africa. This would lower prices, lure buyers of horn to the legal market, reduce incentives to poachers and thus reduce poaching.
Rhino horn is largely composed of keratin, a protein also found in fingernails and hair. It regrows when cut at a rate of about 0.9 kilograms a year. For about $20, a rhino can be sedated long enough for its horn to be harvested, Biggs and colleagues note.
"It is a product that can be delivered to the market sustainably and humanely and in a way that has broader conservation benefits," Biggs said. For example, sale of the horn could be used to strengthen anti-poaching efforts.
Poachers 'very nasty people'
Sam Wasser is a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who has led global efforts to end the illegal ivory trade, which is run by sophisticated crime syndicates motivated by the huge profits in the wildlife trade.
In South Africa, home to three quarters of the last remaining rhinos on the planet, a spike in rhino poaching is threatening the white rhino's survival. NBC News' Harry Smith reports for "Rock Center."
He said the rhino poachers are the same people who poach elephants, describing them to NBC News as "very nasty people that really want to make a lot of money." The paper calling for a legal trade in rhino horn, he said, "grossly underestimates the impact of organized crime on this trade."
In South Africa alone, 668 rhino were killed in 2012; 448 were killed there in 2011. The sharp rise is largely attributed to a rumor that the horn is a cure for cancer. Studies show that it is not. "That's essentially a marketing ploy by organized crime to increase the value and demand for horn," Wasser said.
In order for a legal trade to be effective, he noted, it would need to lower the price of horn from $65,000 to a few hundred dollars per kilogram. "Poachers are going to be trying as hard as they can to get the last rhinos to capitalize on that high price before the price drops, if it ever does," Wasser said.
He added that poaching of elephants increases in the months prior to CITES meetings whenever countries propose a legal sale of ivory because the poachers scramble to benefit from higher prices. He expects the same to happen with a legal rhino horn trade.
If so, the only surviving rhinos will be those under tight security on private lands in South Africa. "They won’t be natural rhinos," Wasser said.
The more effective approach to saving rhinos, he argued, is to focus efforts on breaking apart the crime syndicates that control the ivory trade. "If you do that, you also get the rhino poaching under control because it is the same organized crime groups that are doing this," he said.
This could be easier than it sounds, Wasser added. He works with Interpol, the international criminal police organization, to genetically track the origin of seized ivory. They’ve found most of it comes from a few hotspots. Focusing law enforcement on those hotspots, he said, could shut down the illegal trade.
No silver bullet
Cathy Dean, executive director of Save the Rhino International, a London-based non-profit group, told NBC News that "there is no one silver bullet that is going to solve the rhino-poaching crisis."
Those pushing for legal trade agree that anti-poaching efforts will need to be maintained and policies must be in place to ensure that local communities in and around rhino areas benefit from the sale of horn, for example.
"Broadly speaking, we are in favor of sustainable use and of reducing reliance on donor funding, so the option of legalizing the trade in rhino horn is of interest," Dean said. "But, there are many, many preconditions that must be met before we could support such a measure."
Duan Biggs
A white rhino is shown here in South Africa's Kruger National Park. Rhino horn sells on the black market for $65,000 per kilogram. That's more valuable than cocaine.
For example, she noted, South Africa must find a trading partner for the horn. So far the governments of China and Vietnam, where most of the illegally harvested horn is sold, have shown no willingness to participate in a legal trade.
WWF, the conservation organization, said in a statement that private landowners in South Africa are to be applauded for their efforts in rhino conservation, and that "it is vitally important to keep incentives in place" to ensure their continued involvement.
"At the same time, there are legitimate concerns that establishing a legal avenue of horn trade under current circumstances could produce a range of unintended consequences that would undermine the conservation efforts of WWF and its partners."
For example, a legal horn market could serve as a conduit for laundering illegal rhino horn, increase consumer demand and undermine existing law enforcement.
"The situation is not stable enough to entertain any consideration of legal trade in rhino horn," the WWF said.
Biggs acknowledged that the proposal for a legal trade is controversial, but said it is worth trying. "What we know is that the current situation is certainly not working," he said. "It is failing to conserve rhinos and it comes at taking away resources from other conservation efforts."
More about endangered rhinos:
- Rock Center: Spike in rhino poaching threatens species
- Seven arrested in US for rhino horn trafficking
- Rhinos get upside-down copter ride to safety
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website.
Leave a Comment:
God forbid you could just tell them the truth - that the horn doesn't cure anything - and they'd believe it.
Why not just sell them a bunch of ground up stuff and tell them it'a rino horn and flood the market. Do you think these idiots would really know.
Are we not already cutting horns off the remaining rhino's? So how is this going to stop poachers? We also legally harvest deer, elk, bear, and many other animal species but I have yet to see it stop poachers. Why pay for something you can steal? This type of policy will just put licensed hunters/horn collectors in the same vicinity as poachers. Who do you think is going to claim the horn once it's taken from the animal? It sounds to me like the people put in charge of protecting the animals now want to make money by poaching the horn, feed the need.
Legal horn trade only encourages more poaching.
Same as legalizing some ivory trades encourages more poaching of elephants.
There's only one answer: An across the board ban and full protection for these animals.
Human = barbarians
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There's only one answer: An across the board ban and full protection for these animals.
===========================
.....NO....hire more game wardens with orders to shoot to kill poachers, actually, put a bounty on poachers.
Confussed-1578043
The poachers don't buy it they sell it. By removing it from the black market it's value decreases making it less profitable for the poachers. Why steal something that isn't worth the effort?
In Africa, where elephant hunting is legal and regulated the elephant populations quickly recovered and are now thriving. Where it is still illegal they are being wiped out by poachers
With so few remaining animals, why not just humanely harvest all the horns without trade legalization?
And yes, put a bounty on the poachers. It will create another opportunity to make a buck.
Bans are already in place, and they're already protected.
If what you mean by "full protection" means paying for a military-style organization to patrol and protect the entire habitat full-time, well, that's not on the table. These are not rich countries in the first place, and there's only so much money anyone is going to pay to protect them.
Your "one answer" is a simple extension of the current one, which hasn't proven to be a solution at all.
Well, for one, the harvested horns would end up being sold anyway, just like ivory seized from captured poachers and traffickers; thieves are pretty crafty, and many African officials can be easily bribed.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if you want to safely harvest rhino horn, you still end up leaving behind some horn; taking too much might hurt the rhino. So poachers could still get some rhino horn by killing the remaining rhinos.
Then it seems the only solution is for conservation groups to hire Blackwater contractors to hand all poachers a message.
Like selling alcohol or cigarettes or marijuana legally create less demand/consumption?
Alcohol and cigarettes and marijuana are not rare, are consumed for very obvious reasons, and their markets are subject to completely different pressures than those for poached animal parts. I don't know if a legal market would reduce demand or prices, but that's certainly a facile comparison.
It's not about demand, it's about supply. Legalizing horns, but criminalizing poaching will result in ranches, such as we do with cattle, where rhinos are breed for their horns. This is far more profitable than poaching, and far less risky. Over night the poaching trade is wiped out and rhino populations rise, even though demand increases too.
Supply does not need to be static. Making horn trade illegal artificially depresses supply.
Can they survive without the horn? If so, probably the only way they can be saved from extinction is to capture each and every one and remove the horn and growth plate so the horn will not grow back.
Don't think you can do that with elephants. Think they use them too much in the food gathering process as well as fighting off any predators till they are quite large.
Actually, some elephants are born without horns, and while it's inconvenient for them, they can survive without them.
In fact, there's been a surge in tuskless elephant populations because of rampant poaching; hunters won't bother with them, so they're the most likely to survive and pass on their tuskless genes.
Why is that little one dark on the bottom and light on top? Playing in muddy water or do they look like that?
ya water or mud, you can actually see the big one has it too just on the bottom of legs though.
I think they should try a legal market, if only to see the effects. The other proposals on offer are to keep doing what they're currently doing - an almost certain path to extinction for the species - or try to tackle the organized crime syndicates pushing the poaching, which is frankly hilarious. If we can't bust the poachers or intercept smugglers, a difficult but eminently possible task, why would anyone think we can crack entrenched crime syndicates?
I especially like the thinking that such a push to stop organized crime is going to come from conservationists; we're going to bust organized crime, not to stop the drugs, theft, corruption, or murder, but to save the rhinos! Yeah, that'll happen.
As an alternative.... How about... when they DO catch the poachers of lions, tigers, rhinos and elephants, the automatic and immediate punishment would be to
A. pull all their teeth, and offer those to the Chinese
B. cut off their noses and market those for dagger sheathes
C. cut off their penises/testicles
[though not too sure how much market demand there is for any of the above....]
AND
D. apply the same penalties to any/all who are involved in the sales/purchases of rhino horn, lion/tiger penises/testicles, and elephant tusks!
Mebbe these idiots would have second thoughts once exposed to the same acts to which they give NO thought to these animals to make a buck, or 'feel good'. AND, I wonder whether the people making this ridiculous proposal would be willing to face the same 'sanctions' noted above in the name of their 'logic???'
But what do I know, I'm just a simple Ohio farm boy, who somewhere happened to hear about the basic concepts of demand and supply, and have never felt species should go extinct just because someone wants to make a buck.
Crime and legal study has shown over and over again that imposing harsher punishments for a given crime rarely has an affect on the number such crimes committed. The problem is that once you make a punishment sufficiently harsh, you've already deterred everyone who might have been tempted to commit the crime just because the benefits outweigh the punishment. The remaining criminals are convinced, one way or another, that they will not get caught (or they don't think about it for whatever reason), and thus they don't care what the punishment would be, whether it's mutilation, death, or a stern talking-to.
Other problems with your proposal include the difficulty in passing these laws in developing foreign countries who simply don't care as much, and have less professional law enforcement that are easily bribed and corrupted. No matter how scary you make the potential punishment, it doesn't matter unless you can convince the poacher that it's likely to happen to them.
Just kill them all off and we wont have to worry about it anymore...@!$%#tard aisians....
I think this proposal is the best option to save the Rhinos, but it should include ALL populations of Rhinos. If conservationists can tranquilize all the Rhinos and remove their horns, the poachers will have no reason to kill them. Seems like the cost of the tranquilizer darts, and the tools to humanely remove the horns, would be much more efficient than any attempt to stop the poachers from killing them.
As the horns grow back, they can be harvested again when they get to a size that encourages poaching again.
Or...condemn to death, and execute, all those involved in the currently illegal rhino horn trade. As well as the ivory trade, the exotic animal trade, the poaching "trade"...make THEM extinct!
Yeah, that's going to happen...
That's a proposal I see a lot, but how do you propose we find and catch all these people? Whether we lock them up or kill them when they're caught isn't really what's causing the problem, the problem is that catching enough of them to stop the greater decline of the species is proving next to impossible.
Remember, these aren't first-world law enforcement institutions. You can make the punishments as harsh as you want, but that doesn't matter unless the authorities can actually catch the perpatrators.
I've been saying that for years, the dumb asses!
You can't tell me with all this high tech medical discoveries and DNA research and 3-D printed it's not possible to replicate the damn horn. Grind it and advertise it like Viaga with some sexy oriental with her legs hanging out of the back seat of a pimped Mercedes with a long sharp looking sword in her hand. Please they'll be lining up like children at an ice cream stand wanting to try that stuff. Put a big sock in the pimps shorts as he's holding the back door open. You got it made!!! Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll!!!! And a Rino Picture photoshopped into the background. Hell i'm that gullible!!! Bring it on!!! I'd try that!!
We can. It's been tried, but this consumer base is totaly nuts and the value of the real thing has skyrocketed. It's like how natural diamonds still cost a premium over synthetic.
I can believe that. Even in first-world countries, people are irrationally biased toward "natural" products, hence the whole "organic" fad that has persisted for so long in the food industry. Present someone with a bigger, juicier steak with more nutritional value and for less cost, and plenty of people will still balk when they hear that it's genetically modified.
a famous man once said "STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES",and humans never miss a chance to prove it. if the protien keratin iz what they are after .. then by all means people , donate your fingernail clippings and hair clippings and you got your "fix". my god , just how desperatly idiotic can we be ???
James; It's not US that are stupid. It's the ignorant/stupid orientals. While this solution MIGHT seem a good Idea there needs to be more to it in order to end it.
1. A bounty on the poachers and their employers. Preferably dead only! The bounty should be substantial to make it highly desireable to collect it.
2. A bounty on the buyers and traffikers in the same condition.
3. If the "demand" refuses to go away then a synthetic should be developed to replace it. Maybe cloned horn could be grown as well as continuing the above measures.
Yeah, I don't think China would be cool with the West, or NGO's or whatever in the West, offering up bounties on its citizens based on laws that China doesn't care about. Offering bounties for poachers and traffickers might work, but that would take a lot of money and is ripe for abuse; African countries tend not to have exceptionally upstanding law enforcement.
Then the demand continues... not a good choice. How will the rhino defend itself or its young?
The demand will continue no matter what. The only way you could stop it would be to convince the end users that these horns have absolutely no actual medicinal/herbal value or get them to care about endangered species for their own sake. A nigh impossible task.
Why not grind up viagra and offer it for sale as farm raised rhino horn while suggesting that the diet the farm raised rhinos are fed greatly enhance the effectiveness. They could even have different price levels, no need to make different products just package it differently and hint that the more expensive packets came from the strongest rhinos. Much of the thrill is in spending an absurd amount of $ for the product as a status symbol. I would wager that selling some for 10 X the price of actual black market rhino horn would be a huge seller. I would also wager that viagra would be more effective than rhino horn.
I am too disgusted with the the morons that collect the horns and the idiots that purchase the horn to even comment, other than saying. They probably believe in the tooth fairy also. Stupid ignorant Morons. Trace down the product and lace it with massive doses of laxative. then put it back on the Market.
friggin china and japan think anything will fix them up. i got got a couple ideas on how to fix them up
It's an interesting idea. Clearly there needs to be many approaches to this problem and this should certainly be considered.
Wow another problem in the world and China`s name pops up,say it aint so !
Change.Org please sign the Petition to Overturn the legalization of the Slaughter of US Horses for Human Consumption. Just go to change.org and click on Animals scroll down until you find it and the petition to save the wild burros and sign. Your voice matters. We seem to be bowing to a higher power who wishes to destroy the animals of the planet, so how about we make them have to reach higher cause the animals are out of their reach? Sign today-we need signatures as quickly as possible, March 4, 2013 the Oklahoma Congress and Senate is determining whether to reopen slaughter houses please do Not let this happen.
What's wrong with that? Horses aren't endangered. They're raised as a food animal in Europe, right?
I don't see any reason why slaughtering horses for food should be illegal, and the arguments for allowing it are quite compelling.
You cannot alliviate.Centuries of Myth and Cultural Conditioning..in an instant..
Once again.Ignorance..is to Blame..
Telling ,educating people.that chewing one's fingernails...is the same as ingesting Rhino horn...
Will fall on skeptical ears..
Send a SEVERE message to poachers...what be that...choose...
And Raise MONEY ,for awarness,for protection,for education,and for BOUNTY..on Poachers..
Cutting Rhino Horn is an option..but will only fuel further desire....
The more SCARCE an object is..
The More coveted..it Becomes..
the More Value is placed on it....
Poachers and demand...drive the thirst,,,,
Have people in the Bush...Hunt poachers...
Maybe it's time to end the trade by introducing some laced with a severe poison, preferably undetectable, kind of like the tylenol poisonings years ago. The dirtbags who create the demand should be eliminated.
Don't lump the Japanese in with the Chinese, and southeast asia, they don't use rhino horns, or anyother stupid backwoods cures, its mainly Chinese, but I do agree with some of the post here, grind up cow horns, pass them off as rhino, those uneducated masses, won't know the difference, flood the market with it!
Kflann:
What you don't understand is that the Chinese will not take it in powder form. They grind the horn up by using a bowl lined with sandpaper. If they receive it in powder they won't purchase due to the possibility of a fake product.
It must be the actual horn for it to be considered real. See the article from National Geographic from several months ago.
The authorities need to investigate obvious Crimes Against Nature like the fat little female lording it over a rhinoceros in captivity, as seen in the incredibly sad photo below:
#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=1&a=0&at=0
Olivier should be compelled by the courts to identify who, where, and when. And they need to find and free the rhino and imprison the woman and others who committed this crime.
P.S. Oh, good, NBC News...delete the main part of the webpage? Those interested go to "Olivier Konig dot com slash" before the part of the URL allowed by the Nazis controlling these comments.
By the way, several years ago, Olivier had another photo of the rhino and woman in place of this one in his portfolio. In that one, the rhino was corralled into a small space by bollards that was not even large enough for it to turn around. And the fat little woman was standing just outside its pen, grinning like she was a world-class hunter. So wrong!