Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles, elephants. Today wasn’t great: I witnessed a rhino shot with a tranquilizer from a helicopter, then it was held down, had its horns cut off, and then shaved down. I have some photos and videos from the event but I’m not going to share them, because I think it’s really tragic. While this was happening I put my hand on the rhino’s belly to try to send it love, because I can’t imagine how confusing and terrifying the experience was.
Let’s back up: Why does anyone care about rhino horns? First, you have to start with how dangerous false ideas and memes can be. Rhino horns are 92-95% keratin, just like your fingernails, the rest is basic stuff like melanin, calcium salts, magnesium, sulfur, nitrogen, amino acids, and phosphorus. There is nothing special or magic about a rhino horn that you couldn’t easily obtain many other ways.
However there is a dangerous infovirus going back thousands of years that rhino horns can cure various ailments, from cancer to fevers, and have aphrodisiac properties. To quote Scientific American:
Some purchase horn chunks or powder for traditional medicinal purposes, to ingest or to give others as an impressive gift. Wealthy buyers bid for antique rhino horn carvings such as cups or figurines to display or as investments. A modern market for rhino horn necklaces, bracelets and beads has also sprung up. […]
On the bright side, traditional Chinese medicine experts have increasingly joined the fight to reduce the demand for rhino horn. When China officially banned the international trade in 1993, it followed up by removing rhino horn as a medical ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine’s pharmacopeia and curriculum. […]
“Traditional Chinese medicine has a history of 3,000 years and we have been educating the public for less than 30 years,” Huang notes. “Therefore this is an ongoing education.”
Regardless of the reasons, there is a price for rhino horns. I was told the larger front horn would get about $300,000 on the black market, and rhinos have been poached to near-extinction. Combine that with South Africa’s 33% unemployment rate, some people turn to crime or poaching to make money. It’s cheaper and faster to kill the rhino and take its horn than tranquilize it as the game reserve did.
I don’t want to criticize the people at the game reserve. They clearly cared for the animal quite deeply, and while it was tranquilized, they provided other veterinary help for it, like removing ticks. They also put a tracker on its foot. They say they lock the horns in a vault… why? Burn it, toss it. The thinking is that reserves that are known for de-horning will attract fewer poachers.
This is obviously a middle solution, and I hope ten years from now we’ll look back at this as a point in time we learned from. On the demand side, it seems like aggressive education campaigns could help decrease demand for keratin from rhinos. On the anti-poacher side, I think drones will be able to secure perimeters far more securely than fences currently do. It would be fascinating for an economist like Tyler Cowen to dive into these issues.
You’re not wrong, an aggressive education campaign would certainly have helped, sadly no one thought it was important enough, until it was too late.
Agreed, education would be vital in any initiative but it’s a complex and worldwide issue. Though I hope we do, we may never be able to do enough education to completely remove a black market.
Improved security is definitely a good approach but also alternative methods of deterring may help. The Rhisotope Project (rhisotope.org) through the Wits University have proved that using radio isotopes inserted in a horn are safe and can be detected at nuclear material detection points across worldwide ports of entry. Without removing a horn you can instead detect poached horns, identify routes, and even make the end product more undesirable.
Very exciting research and could be an amazing tool alongside better reserve security.