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TEARS OF RHINO IN SOUTH AFRICA
By: Phung My Trung (Vncreatures.net) and Dang Linh Huong (Traffic)
Part I: Greetings, beautiful South Africa !
Part II: Live capturing rhino for … protection
Part III: Rhino releasing…
Part IV: Tears of rhino or human crime
Part IV: A shameful misleading belief
A SHAMEFUL MISLEADING BELIEF
During my trip to South Africa, a shameful obsession over me when being asked a repeated question by most of the South African colleagues: “What should we do to prevent Vietnamese people from trading and consuming rhino horn?” I am not in the authorized position to adequately answer this question raised by my beloved South African friends. From perspective of a biodiversity researcher, I do want to share my knowledge on rhino horn so no one will be misled into believing in its miraculous value.
What are the components of rhino horn?
Unlike horn of other odd-toed ungulate Perissodactylaspecies, rhino horn lacks a bony core and grows in layers from specialized skin cells, which are then invaded by keratin proteins (keratinized). Keratin is composed of a protein called alpha keratins,the type found in mammalian claws and hoofs. The other chemical components of rhino horn are readily available in a person’s diet andinclude common elements such as carbon and nitrogen.
During the keratinization, skin layers become hard and inert, with all cellular function ceasing. Therefore, in essence, rhino horn is the same as human’s hair, fingernail, and toenail. Even though users grind rhino horn into powder before using, the hard keratins found in it are generally considered indigestible, beinginsoluble (impossible to dissolve) by human protein-digesting enzymes in the stomach(pepsin) and small intestine (trypsin). In the world, there has been no reliable scientific research proving rhino horn’s medical value, especially in treating fatal diseases. Recently, some researches, mainly conducted in China,whilst claiming that rhino horn can reducefever, also found that substances likecommon anti-inflammatory drugs, aspirinwere cheaper andmore effective alternatives.
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Simon Naylor, Director of Phinda Private Game Reserve shared with us: “If the curative ability of rhino horn for cancer can be scientifically proved, then you can build rhino farms in Viet Nam. We are willing to provide you with rhino for captive breeding purpose and for horn exploitation to cure the disease. Just please do not blindly trade and consume rhino horn when you are not sure about the medical effectiveness of rhino horn since it will be driving force for poachers to slaughter our rhino for horn.”
In recent years, due to the contaminated air and environment, polluted water and food poisoning contained by unknown-origin chemical preservations … the number of cancer patients in Vietnam is abnormally increasing. Many patients anxiously worry since there has been no effective drug to cure this disease and try “miracle cures” including rhino horn. This kind of misleading belief contributes as a driving force for the sharply increasing demand for rhino horn, threatening the existence of rhino species on the earth.
Additionally, please keep in mind that the danger is out there when they accidently purchase rhino horn that is injected by lethal drug – the drug that mixes up with the layers as soon as the horn is drilled and injected by South African conservation experts. When the work is completed, conservation workers painted the horn in red color to warn poachers. However, due to enormous profits, rhino horn smugglers even clean off the red paint and sell them into the market.
Valuable experiences from South Africa
Although South Africa has been facing with social issues, this country have still spent huge amount of budget for biodiversity conservation, especially for rare and precious species… In South Africa, there are many private game reserves existing along with National parks and protected areas managed and operated by the government. This is not a new model but the results are very positive. Any individual or group of individuals can pay a certain amount of money to rent a primary bush area for preservation.
Normally, a private game reserve has an area of over 7,000 - 10,000ha and private game reserve owners cooperate with each other to maximize the utilized usage of their managed areas as well as to create a natural habitat that is large enough for wildlife animals to look for their food. The permission granted by the government of South Africa for private sector to operate the conservation work has brought obviously results, such as: Using the private capital resources to improve the conservation work, sharing the financial burdens in preservation operation so that the government can focus its efforts and budgets for national issues such as poverty reduction, resettlement for slumps …Additionally, this model will promote the public awareness on jointly protecting the nature as well as generate the jobs for indigenous people so that they will not exploit the natural resources and conduct rampant poaching.
Especially for rhino species, since they are the national property then private game reserves are permitted to “borrow” breeding rhinos that will be released into their game reserves. After 5-10 years, newly-born rhinos will be put under the private ownership and the owners have the full rights to use or sell them to other game reserves both domestically and internationally to make profits while their parents can be returned to state-owned game reserves for other borrowing turns.
This is an open solution but still being under management with strictly rules and regulations. Most of game reserves that we visited have close collaboration with indigenous people. Game reserves have to generate jobs for people living in the surrounding area to help them with stable income then those hired people can focus on the conservation job. Furthermore, indigenous people know well about the living habitat and roads, paths, and moving trails of wild animals as well as the numbers of them… which can effectively facilitate their performance.
Simon Naylor proudly shared with us: “Totally we have six natural game reserves in all Africa and this is one of our best game reserves. Since it was established in 1991, we had only had one rhino killed by poachers; however, they did not have enough time to saw off the horn when being detected by us”.
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The work of calling for investment, strictly management and effective conservation has brought a huge profit for game reserves. International tourists, especially those coming from Western Europe and North America are being in favor of picnic and leisure form in game reserves. Services include staying in 5-star lodge located in the middle of savanna, watching wild animals in daytime and night time… Most of rooms in the lodge have been fully booked over the year and visitors usually come back to visit these game reserves.
Responsibility with the future
During our fact finding mission about the location of these game reserves in South Africa, we realized that game reserves stretch out and cover an area of several hundreds of kilometers with different geographical conditions which are mainly savanna bush and low hills. The flora species are mainly grass fields and bush plants. Most of the game reserves are located in the areas that were used to be the hunting lands of black tribes. These areas have been built with a traditional culture and customs inherited by generations of indigenous people. This is the reason explaining the close relationship between indigenous cultural preservation and wildlife conservation in the work of biodiversity conservation conducted on this land. If one factor, specifically, rhino species becomes extinct, then it will lead to unforeseen catastrophic disasters for other living species since all species would be forced to change to adapt with the extinction of the factor that has been closely connected with them over million years.
Together with considerable pressures made by international natural conservation organizations, the timely attention paid by the government of South Africa to the biodiversity conservation has been indicated a long-term and sustainable vision. They do not want to see the future South African citizens have to pay for the slow response and stagnant that people have made today in the cause of protecting the tremendous heritage transferred to them from previous generations of this country…
Box:
“If the curative ability of rhino horn for cancer can be scientifically proved, then you can build rhino farms in Viet Nam. We are willing to provide you with rhino for captive breeding purpose and for horn exploitation to cure the disease. |
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