Around 30% of the Southern White Rhino population has been wiped out by poachers in the last decade
The Taiwanese media recently started to debunk the myth surrounding rhino horn and it’s about time.
Remember when Guan Jiang Guang, a self-confessed smuggler, told Al Jazeera how close he was to State Security minister David Mahlobo? Well… Guang has vanished into thin air.
State security minister David Mahlobo’s found himself at the centre of a rhino poaching scandal, but maintains that he’s never even been to the Chinese oke who claims they’re friends’ house.
It’s like state capture 2.0, only this time it’s our critically endangered wildlife being plundered.
Rhino breeders want the booming Asian demand for rhino horn to be met by horns sawn off anaesthetised live animals, arguing that a legal source of horn could end poaching deaths.
Kenya set fire to stockpiles of ivory and rhino horn over the weekend.
Conservationists around the world feel that they have done almost everything possible to save the rhinos in South Africa from poachers – from fencing them in, to assigning anti-poaching rangers, to cutting off the rhinos’ horns to make them less appealing. One conservationist has come up with the only solution he thinks will work – moving the rhinos to Australia.
For the first time since 2007, the number of poached rhino decreased in South Africa, but the increase in numbers in South Africa’s neighbouring countries means the fight is far from over.
An attempt to smuggle two rhino horns out of the country from OR Tambo International Airport has been thwarted by the South African Revenue Service (SARS).