Last year, a record number of rhinoceroses were killed by poachers in Namibia. In total, 87 of the rare animals were killed, almost twice as many as in 2021, according to figures from the Namibian government, according to international news agencies. Rhinos are particularly targeted by poachers because their horns fetch a lot of money in East Asian markets because of their so-called medicinal properties. About 10,000 African rhinoceroses have been killed by poachers in the past decade. In 2022, it is estimated that just over 22,000 rhinoceroses lived in Africa.
According to a spokesperson for the southwestern African country’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, 61 black and 26 white rhinos will have been killed in 2022. Most notably in Etosha National Park, a protected area of more than 22,000 square kilometers in the north. of Namibia, many rhinos have fallen victim to poachers; more than half of the rhinos poached in Namibia perished in Etosha.
‘hot spot’
Rhino poachers have plagued southern Africa in recent decades. Nature reserves such as Etosha are patrolled by armed forces park rangers, with varying degrees of success. In the Maasai Mara reserve in Kenya, for example, regular patrols have come in recent years far fewer poachers than before, allowing animal populations to recover. But in other places in Africa, including Etosha, criminal gangs find their way through the cracks with greater regularity rangers to worm. The Ministry of the Environment speaks of a ‘hotspot’.
In addition to patrols, removing the horns of rhinos is also a measure that is being taken. The horn, which is made of the same material as nails, grows back after a few years. Namibia was the first country that started with the preventive sawing off of the horns. Between 1989 and the early 1990s, not a single hornless rhinoceros was killed by poachers in Namibia.
Two thousand years
Yet dehorning is not a watertight solution either; when sawed away, a small but still valuable piece of horn remains on the skull, which sometimes makes it worthwhile for poachers to kill the animal. Moreover, poachers don’t always see if a rhino has a horn before they shoot, or they kill the dehorned rhinos to make sure they don’t hunt them down in the future.
According to traditional Chinese texts pulverized rhino horns have been used for 2,000 years to treat a wide variety of ailments, including cancer, rheumatism, gout, typhoid, headaches, hangovers and snake bites. Despite the fact that there is no evidence that the horns are medicinal, there is still enough demand to make poaching attractive to criminal gangs.