www.thesouthafrican.com
24 - 30 September 2013
Issue 533
ASIAN YOUTH ATTITUDES TO RHINO HORN CHANGING
|More than 600 rhinos have been slaughtered in South Africa in 2013, already near the total number killed in 2012. Speaking in London ahead of World Rhino Day on Sunday, leading South African wildlife vet Dr William Fowlds said finding and saving an injured poached rhino was like ‘a living hell’ and that changing attitudes to rhino horn lies with young people by HARRIET MANN FOR the first time in the history of rhino poaching, the channels to influence and educate Asian countries against the use of rhino horn are starting to open. In Vietnam and China, government initiatives, celebrities and young people are beginning to back campaigns and educational programmes to stop the illegal poaching trade, according to leading South African wildlife vet Dr William Fowlds. “This is an unprecedented chapter in our efforts to reach the market, we have to take advantage of what is going on there,” he said. Ahead of World Rhino Day, Dr Fowlds was talking at ‘The Changing Face of the Rhino’ lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, London, which brought himself, celebrity adventurer Bear Grylls and CEO of Born Free Will Travers together to discuss rhino conservation. Rhino horn is popular in south east Asian cultures as it is deemed to have medicinal qualities that cure a plethora of ailments; from the common hangover to cancer. It has been a long-running perception that conservationists cannot influence this Asian tradition, yet Fowlds noticed a marked change in attitudes during a recent trip to a Vietnamese university. Far from the university staff censoring his lecture, they encouraged him to be as shocking as possible and the students surprised him by being open and
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Thandi, a young rhino who was shot by poachers in the Eastern Cape, was saved by SA wildlife vet Dr William Fowlds and has made a full recovery. Photo by Marcél Baumhauer da Silva
engaged. Fowlds believes that changing the world’s attitudes of rhino horn lies with young people. “The youth in Vietnam is an accessible market to get the message across,” he said. In the last five weeks, South Africa has lost more than 100 rhinos to poachers. In the last four weeks, at least three rhinos have been poached each night, Fowlds said. Numbers have dropped by 95% in the last century, from 500,000 rhinos to
29,000 across Africa and Asia, Save The Rhino reveals. Rhino horn, which takes 48 hours to get from the body to Asia, is made of keratin. Despite being made from the same material as human fingernails, it is twice as valuable as gold pound-for-pound. “It is useless. It is valued at that because of greed,” said Grylls. “I believe we are in the middle of an international wildlife crisis. And the crisis revolves around… the humble rhinoceros horn,” he
added. The legalisation initiative is a proposed solution to the steep increase in the number of poached rhinos in South Africa. In 2007, 13 rhinos were poached. In 2013, an estimated 900 rhinos will die for their horns. Supporters of legalisation believe that control will no longer lie with criminals and an increase in supply – achieved by dehorning rhinos in a way that keeps them alive – will see a drop in price and thus Continued on page 2
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