Hi, this is inquiry will talk about what is happening currently in South Africa to prevent poaching of rhinos.
poachers in South Africa tend to take advantage of a crash of tourist, to kill rhinos for there horns. In 3 popular game parks they have come up with the decision to dehorn dozens of rhinos. This leave their horns small enough that poachers won’t bother them. This controversial excercise has left people nervous for the rhinos to defend themselves, but then trying to keep them safe. Dehorning them makes male rhinos vulnerable in fights as it is their main weapon of choice. The good news with this, is that like fingernails, their horns do grow back! This posed the question for me, why do poachers then have to kill them to take the horn when they could take a descent amount of it, not leave them to die and making it so these beautiful animals do not go extinct? I don’t see how for them, how that is good for business.
Nico Jacobs, a helicopter pilot, took Reuters for a ride over the pilanesburg national park, they spotted a lioness eating the carcass of a rhino that had been poached days earlier. Jacobs, working along with authorities, have been dehorning rhinos for 3 years now. This has caused a drop in poaching. They have not given the numbers for the amount poached and the rhinos in the park, for their safety. Poachers could see the information and plan it accordingly. The international rhino foundation said, Decades of hunting these animals and habitats loss have reduces their numbers to about 27,000 today.
Experts are concerned that the absence of tourists due to the global lockdown, corona virus, will create a poaching spike. when they remove the rhinos horns, they tranquilize the rhino before removing the animals horn, with an electric saw. This just creates a stub. They had to do this to a female rhino and 1 of her caves had to be restrained, safely of course. Jacobs says the main goal is to protect these animals, “1 of the only solutions that we have now is to trim the rhinos horns and so we’ve started this unprecedented practice to try and protect these animals by removing their horns. We are not saying it’s the absolute solution.”
This war is not just with/for the animals but is people against people. The poachers are armed and are not afraid to shoot the teams that are protecting the animals. They are supplied with rifles, sword and ammunition, shooting is definitely the most common way to kill the rhino. They are willing to kill, this is because “a” rhino horn sells for 60,000$ a kilogram, more than Cocaine or gold. Some sell it on the black market but in certain places it is also used for medical purposes or example East Asia. Even though it contains the same key ingredient as human fingernails.
I understand that this is all hard to hear but with the corona outbreak, it has created these animals to become even more vunterable, as there are not as many tourist. It is important just to know that this is going on and to spread the news. Poaching is still a big problem and needs to be made more aware. Thank you for reading this and I hope you all are safe and well!