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| credit: NZ Rhino Fund |
There has been a significant increase in the number of rhinos killed for their horn in Africa, and wildlife officials are pointing to the influx of Chinese laborers. In a new scramble for Africa reminiscent of the European colonization, China is buying up all the resources it can including agricultural land on the continent. The chief ranger of Lewa, a private reserve north of Nairobi says the influx of Chinese workers has reignited the demand for horn. It can be sold for thousands of dollars on the black market, and criminal gangs are responding by poaching with sophisticated equipment such as night vision scopes, silenced automatic weapons, and aircraft. The increased poaching is not committed by a few starving subsistence farmers hunting for bush meat. The gangs are organized with established international supply routes to Asia. Rhino horn has long been considered an aphrodisiac. Recently it has been claimed to possess cancer curing properties despite no medical evidence to support the claim. Even in South Africa where rhinos are in the greatest number, poaching is becoming unsustainable. The southern white rhino was brought back from the edge of extinction in the wild from less than 100 in the late 19th century to more than 21,000 today. But the northern white rhino, once plentiful in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is thought to be extinct in the wild. The black rhino
[photo], thanks also to intensive conservation efforts, has increased in numbers from 2,500 to 4,200. It was once the most numerous herbivore in Africa with 70,000 continent wide. Namibia is the only southern African country to report no significant increase in illegal rhino hunting. Since 2005 an estimated 900 rhinos have been poached across Africa.
