A booming black-market demand for rhinoceros horns is driving a lucrative new wave of high-tech poaching that threatens the fight to save the world’s rhino populations from extinction.
The epicenter of the crisis is South Africa, which has lost nearly one rhinoceros a day to poaching this year.
Conservationists fear the problem could spill over into other regions, pushed by a surge in demand for rhino horn in Asia, notably in Vietnam, where it is used as a traditional medicine and sells for tens of thousands of dollars per horn.
Photo: AFP
South Africa, which is home to more than 70 percent of the world’s remaining rhinos, has lost 316 of the animals to poaching this year, up from 122 last year, and a jump from less than 10 each year two decades ago, according to Joseph Okori, African rhino coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund.
“It has been a disastrous year for rhino conservation,” Okori said.
He blamed the surge in poaching on “well-organized syndicates” that use helicopters, night vision equipment, veterinary tranquilizers and silencers to hunt their prey at night.
“The criminal syndicates in South Africa operate on very high-tech. They are very well-coordinated,” Okori said. “This is not normal poaching.”
Conservationists estimate there are around 25,000 rhinos left globally, with three species in Asia and two in Africa.
Asia’s rhino populations have already been pushed to the brink of extinction by hunting and deforestation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists both Javan and Sumatran rhinos as critically endangered and Indian rhinos as vulnerable to extinction.
In Africa, conservationists have fought to restore the continent’s black and white rhino species, both devastated by hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Thanks to the large-scale creation of national parks and efforts to combat poaching, the southern white rhino, once thought to be extinct, now numbers 17,500 and growing.
Black rhino numbers are also rising and stand at 4,200 — though this is a fraction of the hundreds of thousands thought to have roamed the continent in 1900, the IUCN says.
But that resurgence now faces a setback as a new wave of poaching hits the continent.
While the rhino horn trade is banned under the 175-member Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the use of rhino horn in Asian traditional medicine has continued to feed demand. In one recent case, a rhino horn sold for US$70,000, according to CITES.
The wildlife monitoring group Traffic, which has studied the medicinal use of rhino horn powder, says the substance is used as a fever-reducer in traditional Chinese medicine.
More recently, researchers say, a belief that rhino horn can cure cancer has emerged in Vietnam.
Tom Milliken, Traffic’s director for east and southern Africa, said that belief — together with Vietnam’s recent economic boom — is helping drive the current surge in poaching.
“Vietnam suddenly emerged in the mid-2000s as a new market,” he said. “In my view it is the largest rhino horn market in the world today and really stands behind this trade.”
Milliken led a delegation of South African officials to Vietnam in October to meet with his contemporaries there on measures to curb the trade, but no agreements have been reached.
South African officials are meanwhile targeting the supply side.
The government launched a National Wildlife Crime Investigation Unit in October to crack down on poachers.
Parks and game reserves have also begun a range of inventive anti-poaching programs, including dying the horns, tracking them with micro-chips and cutting them off before poachers can get to them.
However, Milliken fears the crackdown in South Africa will only displace the problem to other regions.
“That’s the whole history of the rhino horn trade to Asia,” Milliken said. “There’s unlimited consumer demand driving this and if it’s not contained at source, it historically has swept from one country to another.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was