Spare the rhinos . . .
It’s only keratin
A videographer filmed Mark Wilby as he walked into the front shop of the newspaper I was working at some years ago. Mark sat down and took off his shoes. He opened his newspaper to a page that showed a slaughtered rhino and placed it on the floor in front of him
There on camera, in a public space for all to see, he removed his socks and placed his bare feet on the newspaper. He produced a nail-clipper and then began cutting his toe nails.
A small group of people gathered around and probably thought he had lost his grip on reality as he carefully gathered all his nail clippings onto the newspaper. I know Mark as one of the sanest people in town.
I understood his message and why he was speaking to the camera while he methodically collected all his clippings and put them in an envelope.
Mark said, “I am sending this to the Chinese Embassy in South Africa not because I am blaming the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, I just don’t know who else to appeal to”.
As he sealed and addressed the envelope he explained that the Chinese government does have the power to help us find and understand the market for rhino horns.
He encouraged viewers to do the same as he had just done – send nail clippings to the Chinese Embassy. Fingernail clippings or even hair would do just as well.
It’s all keratin – and that’s the message. Rhino horns are made of keratin, a fibrous protein, so that if you send your nails to China it would be the same as sending rhino horns.
There is no reason to kill rhinos to cut off their horns. Their horns are made from the same fibrous protein as your toe nails.
People pay huge sums of money to buy rhino horns. They could just as easily buy fingernails clippings – they have the same medicinal value – absolutely nothing.
Mark’s staged protest attracted a lot of attention. More than 20,000 people viewed the video on YouTube and the very next day several people repeated his deed. They all sent their nail clippings to the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria.
In a text accompanying the video, Mark wrote:
“Yes, it is disrespectful to the Chinese Embassy - but I think that concern pales next to the brutal ignorance and inhumanity being inflicted on the rhinoceros. It may even be too late. Now it seems that the trade in other wild animal parts, such as lion bone - for mysterious and little-understood 'medicinal' purposes - is seeing a massive increase. Where is it going to end?”
He then concluded:
“So - if you feel similarly inclined, go for it! Fingernails or hair would also do. And then share it, like it, tweet it, bleat it, etc..
For South Africa: 972 Pretorius Street, Arcadia, Pretoria, 0083. Or the Chinese Embassy in your country.
The two biggest markets for rhino horn are China and Vietnam. They purchase rhino horns for two (unpardonable) real reasons and one (equally unpardonable) fake reason.
First, let’s get the fake reason out of the way. Chinese people do not buy the horns because they believe it has some kind of weird aphrodisiac powers. OK, perhaps a very small minority do.
This notion of using rhino horns in the place of little blue pills is a figment of Western media’s prurient imagination. President of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Lixin Huang said, “It was never used for improving male sexual function or for curing cancer.1”
He added, “Every historical documented use of rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine was for treating conditions such as fever and infection."
The two real reasons are: Rhinos horns are used for traditional medicines (mainly in China) and for displays of wealth in the form of carvings (mainly Vietnam).
Rhino poaching in South Africa
In this country there are two broad categories of poaching. The first includes small groups of young men, usually from impoverished circumstances, who take a pack of scrawny dogs to hunt bushmeat. They are looking for meat to feed themselves and to sell to others who wish to eat meat.
They don’t particularly care what kind of animal they might kill as long as it provides meat. Usually they hunt small types of antelope, but it could be a hare, warthog or anything that crosses their path.
Often they set wire snares that trap and kill wild animals in a terribly cruel manner. These bushmeat hunters are not particularly dangerous even though they might be armed. A confrontation between illegal hunters and anti-poaching units can be ugly, but it is unlikely that the poacher will spend more than a few days in prison.
The extremely dangerous poachers are heavily armed syndicates who are only interested in rhino horns. One rhino horn can be worth six-months’ salary. They move in expensive cars and sometimes even in helicopters. The stakes are high. They can afford sophisticated tracking equipment, night-vision binoculars and lethal weaponry.
The poachers find their targets quickly, sometimes with the help of inside information from game reserve staff members. They shoot the animal with a powerful rifle and then saw off its horn. In minutes they are gone, never to be seen again.
Often they callously shoot a mother rhino in front of its baby. They leave the confused calf to wander around until hopefully rescuers find it.
Finding a tragically slaughtered animal is a heart-rending experience.
Last year (2020), 394 rhinos were poached in South Africa2. This is a shocking figure, but it is better than it has been in recent years. From 2013 to 2017, more than a thousand rhinos were illegally killed in South Africa every year.
The high level of rhino poaching has had a number of consequences.
Owners of rhinos have invested heavily in anti-poaching personnel, dogs and equipment. The better resourced reserves have set up their own anti-poaching units with expert trackers and dog-handlers. They are constantly patrolling fences with their Belgian Malinois dogs trained to follow the scent of poachers. It can be too expensive to keep rhinos if you have to put up special fences, arrays of cameras and patrol at night. Some people believe it is not worth it.
Secondly, the price of rhinos at game auctions has crashed. People are less willing to take the risks of rhino ownership so it is often easier just to sell them. Ten years ago it was not unusual for rhinos to be auctioned off at over one-million rand each (about U$70,000). Today you can expect less than a fifth of that price.
Thirdly, several reserves have tranquilised their rhinos and cut off their horns before any poachers can get to them. This drastic action removes the reason for hunting the animals, but it has negative consequences too. It is not a happy experience to tranquilise a rhino. Things can go wrong and the animals find it traumatising. After a while, the horns grow back and then the dehorning process has to happen again.
Furthermore, seeing rhinos with sawn-off horns is not aesthetically pleasing. They don’t look natural and it is a perpetual reminder of the ever present poachers.
There is also the risk that dehorned rhinos cannot defend themselves against predators.
Finally, visitors are strongly advised not to post pictures of rhinos on social media, especially not if it is possible to identify the location of the sighting. It is believed that poaching syndicates trawl social media sites looking for pictures of rhinos.
You can find many social media pages of South African reserves with thousands of beautiful photographs – but none seem to have rhinoceroses.
You will note that I have posted pictures of rhinos in the Real Safari newsletter, but I have made sure that it is impossible to tell where those sightings occurred.
Let us help to eradicate rhino poaching altogether. There is only one place where a rhino horn looks good, and that’s on a rhino.
Remember . . . it’s only keratin.
Jeremy Hsu writing in Scientific American, April 5, 2017. The Hard Truth about the Rhino Horn “Aphrodisiac” Market - Media coverage hyping the supposed use of rhino horn to pump up sex drive does no favours for conservation efforts.
Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment media release. The department report back on rhino poaching in South Africa in 2020. February 1, 2021.