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South Africa is at the centre of the problem because it has most of the rhino, and because it now, against international opinion, allows legal domestic trading of rhino horn. This has led to rhino horn being worked to disguise it as jewellery and powder, and exported illegally, principally to Vietnam and China. It is getting ever harder for customs officials to recognise illegal wildlife products.

The relationship between smuggling and law enforcement is like an evolutionary arms race in nature, as each innovation by the smugglers is recognised and tackled by law enforcement, so the criminals innovate and switch strategies.

There can be a tendency to retain an old-fashioned stereotype of “the poacher” as a poor local struggling to feed his family, but the reality is that when it comes to high value products such as rhino horn, the players are often well-organised criminal syndicates involved in other unsavoury activities. The link is unsurprising, given the illegal wildlife trafficking industry is estimated to be worth US$23 billion.

However, South Africa recently undermined efforts to reduce demand by lifting its ban on the domestic rhino horn trade. This has made life a lot more difficult for law enforcement as a legal trade sends out the message that rhino horn is valuable, and so facilitates an illegal trade. The recent release of a Thai rhino kingpin from a South African jail only six years into a 40-year sentence raises further questions of the country’s commitment to tackling wildlife crime.

It’s easy to see why South African game farms would support a legal trade. Rhino horn can be harvested without having to kill the animal, many farms have stockpiles, and farms want to cash in on their stock. Based on the Asian black market value, rhino horn is estimated to be worth US$65,000 per kg. The problem is that rhino horn should not have a value, and indeed has no commercial value outside the illegal trade, driven principally by consumer demand from Asia.

It’s about people

The illegal wildlife trade hurts people as well as animals and plants. Poachers, where caught, are jailed or killed, and their families impacted. Wildlife rangers and law enforcement officers also risk their lives. Desperate people part with cash and hope to invest in false medicinal promise provided by charlatans and criminals. Ecotourism potential is eroded by biodiversity loss – with immeasurable future economic costs.

 

Local communities where rhino and other endangered species live are a key, yet historically often overlooked, factor influencing the sustainability of endangered wildlife populations. All too often the benefits of conservation do not go to local indigenous communities. Community empowerment and integration in wildlife conservation will improve local support and ideally reduce the need and cost of high-tech militaristic solutions.

Reducing demand

Historically, demand for rhino horn was driven by perceived (yet entirely mythical) medicinal benefits. Demand can be reduced, firstly, by ending all legal trade and therefore not giving rhino horn a value. And second, by broadening education programmes to young and old in Asia to inform that rhino horn has no medicinal value. Rhino horn is useless – except to the rhino.

Alongside this, we need to reverse the perception that ownership of rhino horn is a positive status symbol. Society needs to value the live rhino in the wild more than its horn, and rhino horn products should be viewed as a badge of shame, not of honour. As conservation biologist Ian Redmond puts it: “Far from being a status enhancing display, use of rhino horn and ivory now says ‘I support organised crime’.”

This sort of culture shift requires not only education in the classroom through teachers, but beyond the traditional education system. For instance, TRAFFIC targeted businesses in a three-year demand reduction project in Vietnam, while film star Jackie Chan is facilitating social change across Asia:

Demand for product, even with perceived “traditional” motivation, can be reduced: demand for rhino horn dagger-handles from Yemen in the 1970s and 80s, for instance, was effectively closed. We need to do the same again – tackling whatever consumer market stands to gain from rhino horn. However, a hot-off-the-press TRAFFIC report highlights that demand reduction programmes must improve and be evidence-based and targeted in order to be effective.

Endgame

Biodiversity is a global good, and when a species is gone, it is gone forever. The quagga, Tasmanian tiger, passenger pigeon, great auk, dodo, giant tortoises and giant birds – all hunted to extinction. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute to ensuring the rhino does not go the same way. At its simplest, do not support the illegal wildlife trade: do not buy, report suspicions, and spread the word that ownership of rhino horn, elephant ivory, pangolin scales, and other illicit wildlife products is unacceptable.

The link between wildlife crime and legal trade has serious implications for conservation. We need to get the message across that consumption and use of rhino horn and illegal wildlife products are bad news for everybody – not just the animals.

Jason Gilchrist, Ecologist, Edinburgh Napier University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image credits: Simon_G (Shutterstock)

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This supports findings by the Department for Environmental Affairs, which released poaching statistics for 2016 in February this year. Although the DEA statistics show a 10.3% decline in rhino poaching (as compared with the previous year), nearly three rhinos are being killed in South Africa every day.

The reality is that the rhino poaching war rages on, and those that offer their lives, their skills, or their support are in it for the long haul. Since 2012, the Rhino Conservation Awards have been held annually, honouring those that put themselves between Africa’s rhinos and those who seek their destruction.

This year, the ceremony will be held on the 21st of August 2017, under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco.  The founders of the Awards, Dr Larry Hansen and Miss Xiaoyang Yu look forward to hosting the ceremony, recognising those who are fighting on the frontlines of the rhino poaching war. The Awards are sponsored by ZEISS and are held in collaboration with the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and the Game Rangers Association of Africa.

Nominations are now open, and are invited from all African rhino range states. There are five categories for nomination, for activities occurring between July 2016 and June 2017. “In the past, the youth category was adjudicated separately, but this year we’ll be adjudicating these inspiring youth along with their adult counterparts, in the relevant category,” says Dr Hansen. “Nominations can be made by and/or on behalf of any person or organisation that has played a part in rhino conservation, on any scale.”

The Best Field Ranger division celebrates employed field rangers who work daily in the field of active rhino protection and risks personal safety and comfort to do so.

Best Conservation Practitioner honours a person, team or entity working full-time in the conservation field and fighting rhino poaching through protected area management, intelligence gathering, strategic anti-poaching operation management, and so on.

The Best Political, Investigative and Judicial Support category goes to a person, team or entity that plays a significant role in the political, investigative or judicial arenas and whose actions resulted in supporting the conservation of rhino in Africa. This includes law enforcement agencies, units and personnel.

Best Rhino Conservation Supporter will go to a person, team or entity that plays a significant role in supporting the conservation of rhino. Supporters can lend support from any field that includes (but is not limited to) the scientific, awareness, education or funding spheres.

The Special Award for Endangered Species Conservation is a new category, and will go to a person, team or entity working full-time in the field to combat poaching of other endangered species, in field protection, protected area management, intelligence gathering, strategic anti-poaching operations management, etc. This includes field rangers and conservation practitioners.

“Our hope is that these Awards will raise awareness around what is being done in the war against rhino poaching. This will serve to motivate involved role players to keep fighting in order to ensure the rhino’s survival,” concludes Dr Hansen.

Nomination are now open, and forms can be requested from Janyce Dalziel at janyce@currintevents.co.za, or downloaded from http://www.rhinoconservationawards.org/nominate.html. Nominations will close on the 30th June 2017. An executive committee will review all nominations and draw up a short-list. A panel of adjudicators will then identify the winners and runners up in each category.

For more information, visit www.rhinoconservationawards.org

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In South Africa, domestic trade of rhinoceros horn, forbidden since 2008, is about to become legal again. On April 7 2017, a court effectively overturned the national ban.

This controversial move was welcomed by commercial rhino breeders, who argue that legalising safe, sustainable horn removal from living animals could prevent wild rhino poaching. But animal preservation groups have warned that any legal trade would have the opposite effect.

Poaching has indeed reached new heights this year. On March 7, a rhinoceros was killed in the Thoiry zoo, near Paris, and its main horn was sawed off and stolen. This is the first time a living rhinoceros in a European zoo has been killed for its horn.

That same week, in South Africa, 13 rhinos were found dead in a single day, decimated by poachers.

Only 62 rhinos were poached across Africa in 2006. The following year this figure shot up to 262 animals, then 1,090 by 2013, 90% of which were killed in South Africa.

A sharp fall in population

According to 2015 surveys, there are less than 30,000 rhinoceros left on the planet.

Rhinoceros are divided into five separate species. Africa (mainly South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe) is home to white rhino (around 20,400 specimens, 18,500 of which are in South Africa) and the black rhino (5,200 specimens, 1,900 of which are in South Africa). As their names indicate, the Indian rhino (3,500 specimens living in India and Nepal), the Sumatran rhino (250 animals) and the Javan rhino (only 50 animals) are found in Asia.

Depending on its age and species, an adult rhinoceros can have up to a few kilograms worth of horn, the white rhino being the best endowed (up to 6kgs). Indian and Javan rhinos have only one horn, while the other three species have two.

In 2015, a total of 1,342 white and black rhinos were poached across the continent. Over the last few years, as many (or more) rhinoceros have been killed in South Africa than are naturally born in Kruger National Park and on private farms put together.

Bogus medicinal properties

Rhino horn, highly valued in China and Vietnam, is used in traditional Asian medicine to treat fevers and cardiovascular disease. More recently, it has been prescribed as a cancer treatment and an aphrodisiac.

While there is no scientific evidence for such medicinal properties, these unfounded beliefs are feeding soaring Asian demand for powdered rhino horn. Prices are skyrocketing: up to US$60,000 a kilo, which is more expensive than gold.

In truth, rhino horn is simply a formation of keratin, a protein found in human nails and animal claws, with a few amino acids and minerals, phosphorus and calcium.

Controlling a lucrative criminal market

Criminal trade in wild animals constitutes one of the world’s largest illegal markets, according to the UN, along with drugs, counterfeit products and human trafficking. Each year, it affects tens of millions of specimens of animals and plants.

In 2014, this trade was estimated at between US$10 billion and US$20 billion.

Today, there is clear evidence that organised crime groups have taken over this illicit market. It is among the most highly developed criminal activities confronting the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a 1977 international agreement signed by 182 countries.

With support from Interpol, Europol, the World Customs Organisation and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), CITES applies the ban on rhinoceros-horn trading. Using a system of permits and certificates delivered under special conditions, CITES regulates the market for rhinos and about 35,000 other wild species, categorised into three groups according to the level of protection required.

The white rhino, which is not necessarily threatened with extinction, is an appendix species II for South Africa and Swaziland, meaning the trade there must be controlled in order not to jeopardise the animal’s survival. For all other African range states, the white rhino is listed on appendix I: all trade of this endangered species is forbidden, except for non-commercial purposes such as scientific research.

Appendix III contains species that are protected in at least one country, which has sought assistance in controlling their trade.

Prior to the 2000s, and up until 2007, pressure on consumer countries (Yemen, Korea, Taiwan and China) to stop the rhino trade helped reduce poaching activity, leading to an increase in the African rhino population.

But demand for rhino horn surged in the mid-2000s, chiefly in Vietnam, because of rumours that a government official suffering from cancer went into remission after its use.

Likewise, there is still demand in China and Hong Kong for wealth-signaling objects made of rhino horn, such as libation cups and jewellery.

Where, then, do all these horns come from? According to UNODC, today the major shipments of rhino horn originate primarily in South Africa, followed by Mozambique (where rhinos are gone, but poachers have dipped into stocks at South Africa’s Kruger National Park), Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Both the United Arab Emirates and Europe have served as trading routes. In 2011, the Czech government discovered that some of its citizens were selling trophies they had hunted in South Africa to Vietnamese traders. Some 90 rhino horns were also stolen from museums and auction houses across Europe between January 2011 and June 2012 by the Irish Rathkeale Rovers, a gang since dismantled by Europol.

The import of trophies

Though the international rhino horn trade has been forbidden since 1977, CITES recognises some exceptions. It allows, for instance, limited hunting of Appendix II and I species, including, under exceptional circumstances, of endangered white and black rhinoceros

This allowance recognises that well-managed and sustainable hunting is actually consistent with and contributes to conservation efforts. It provides both livelihood opportunities for rural communities and incentives for habitat conservation. And it generates benefits that can be invested in conservation.

It also demonstrates that effective conservation, management and monitoring plans and programs are in place in a number of African range states, meaning that some populations are recovering enough to sustain limited off-takes as trophies.

Though bringing these rhinoceros-hunting trophies (including horns) hunted in South Africa home as personal property is authorised by CITES, their sale is not. Trophies may then be exported to certain African countries under specific conditions (a non-detriment finding by the exporting country is required beforehand).

Between 2006 and 2011, 1,344 hunting trophies, including African rhino horns from both species [were legally exported](https://cites.org/sites/default/files/fra/cop/16/prop/F-CoP16-Prop-10.pdf (page 5) as personal property. They mainly came from South Africa, where just under 75 trophy-hunting expeditions were organised prior to 2006, and to a lesser extent, Namibia. Vietnam was the top importing country, ahead of the US, Spain and Russia.

After a sudden upsurge in requests for hunting permits from Vietnam, where it was discovered that rhino horns had been illegally sold, South African authorities in 2012 put an end to permits for Vietnamese nationals.

Opening the market?

As demonstrated in last week’s South African court case overturning the ban on the rhino trade, some countries are showing signs of restlessness under the current CITES regime.

Swaziland, for instance, would also like to see change. During the last international meeting of CITES signatory parties in late September 2016, this small country submitted a proposal to allow limited regulated trade in white rhino horn. It has a small population of about 75 white rhinos living protected in parks.

Between 1988 and 1992, an intense period of poaching wiped out 80% of Swaziland’s rhino population. This left it with a large stock of horns that it would like to be able to sell. The proposition was voted down by the majority of CITES countries.

Now, South Africa’s legal U-turn could open a new avenues for the rhino trade. Most South African farmers believe that the ban only encourages poaching and that they themselves could fulfil Asian demand by providing horns from living animals.

Farmers know how to cut the horn with a saw so that it will grow back, a painless procedure for the animal that is put under anaesthetic for around 15 minutes. Protecting rhinos on ranches costs them millions of dollars as they face raids from poachers.

The current poaching crisis differs from a prior crisis in the 1990s in two ways. First, the illegal rhino horn trade has been taken over by organised crime groups because it is less severely punished than other illegal trades (although this is changing thanks to new legislation introduced in most countries).

Then there’s the skyrocketing traffic to East Asia, which reveals the region’s ever-growing demand of miscellaneous African animal products for traditional Asian medicine, from rhino horns to elephant ivory and, now, the skin of domestic African donkeys

What can be done?

Conservation groups should remain resolute at this critical juncture.

National, regional and sub-regional networks have intensified their fight against this transnational criminal market and are now being coordinated by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crim, which brings together CITES with various anti-fraud organisations. Thus far, their battle has produced very good results.

It is now up to Asian authorities to raise awareness and discourage the use of rhino horn. China has already taken steps in this direction and, in November 2016, Vietnamese authorities burnt a stock of rhino horn.

Still, some say it will take a generation to change attitudes. Can the planet’s remaining 30,000 rhinoceros survive until then?

Jacques Rigoulet, Vétérinaire, expert CITES, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN) – Sorbonne Universités

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A Rhino horn is made up of Keratin, which is the same substance, that makes up our finger and toenails. Somehow, the myth has spread that a Rhino horn can cure certain disease such as febrile disease, influenza, poisoning and epilepsy. However, it has been scientifically proven that a Rhino’s horn has no medical or scientific benefit. The demand for Rhino horn is skyrocketing within Asian countries and cultures across the world! Last year, in South Africa alone, over 1000 Rhinos were poached. In fact, poaching incidents are steadily increasing in South Africa and as a result Rhino populations are almost unable to recover themselves. Experts are warning that if we don’t turn the situation around, Rhinos will be extinct in the wild within 10 years year time. 

The route Daniel is walking, is the same route on which 100 Rhino will be moved from high-risk areas in South Africa to the comparative safety of Botswana, where poaching is virtually unheard of. Botswana boasts the lowest poaching rate on the continent. The reason – an anti-poaching unit supported by the country’s military, a strict anti-poaching policy and intense government interest in conservation. Working in a phased approach, “Rhinos Without Borders” completed the translocation of the first batch of Rhino in early 2015. The Rhino are being translocated to a number of undisclosed locations throughout the country, where they will roam free in the wild. 

Daniel is walking the same route in May/June to raise money to fund the next phase of the relocation of Rhinos. Along the way he will also be stopping at various communities and schools to educate locals about why Rhino are important for the people of South Africa and raise awareness around the issue of poaching. Daniel and his team are keeping sponsors and supporters up to speed with his daily encounters along the way by reporting through his social media platforms. He can also be tracked on his SPOT GEN3 tracking unit here: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=05fYXJbjvajbLYOHPdASpC0VGIDGNecPq

Fundraising: www.gofundme.com/hopeforhorns

Instagram: @hopeforhorns

Facebook: Hope for Horns & Our Horn is NOT Medicine

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