Rhino poaching: Flooding the market with fake horns as a combat measure could make the problem worse, fear conservationists
The last remaining male northern white rhino died in Kenya in 2018.
According to the latest statistics, two rhinos are killed each day in South Africa. Although that number is lower than the previous year, it is still concerning.
In the first six months this year, 318 rhinos had already been poached, Department of Environmental Affairs data says. To combat the rapidly declining number of rhinos in the world that are constantly under threat from poachers, scientists from the University of Oxford and Fudan University in Shanghai have collaborated to develop an artificial rhino horn that they believe could change the game.
Conservationists, however, are very skeptical.
What is the fake rhino horn?
The fake rhino horn is made from taping horse tail hair together "with a bespoke matrix of regenerated silk mimicking the collagenous component of the real horn" they wrote in a paper published last week.
The horn has a market for being an aphrodisiac in Asia, although often they are just spiked with Viagra. The use of rhino horn as an aphrodisiac is a misconception and has no medical evidence backing it. However, because it's such a popular myth, it has become a new reason to want to use the horn in Vietnam.
In Chinese medicine, rhino horn is used to treat high fever. The composition of the horn is primarily keratin—a protein found in hair, fingernails, and animal hooves.
Professor Fritz Vollrath, from the Department of Zoology at Oxford, one of the authors of the study, said that the fake rhino horn can be made very similar to the real one if you try hard enough.
"It can be made very similar, depending on the effort the maker puts into it. The important aspect here is that the fundamental materials of defoliated (washed and softened) horsehair and a protein glue that hardens well provide the basis for a good to excellent horn copy," Vollrath said in an email to MEA World Wide.
He believes that combined with a vigorous publicity campaign, the fake horns would both demystify the real horn and undermine the market in real horns which rely on high costs along the supply chain. He hopes that this development would aid in killing the poacher market when applied "in combination with the exciting more traditional conservation efforts of habitat conservation, rangers on the ground, vigilant customs and enforcement officials and steep penalties for trading illegally."
Not a new trend
In 2016, something similar was suggested. Conservationists filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by the Center for Biological Diversity and WildAid to ban bioengineered, or cultured, rhino horn.
At the time, several companies like Pembient, CeratoTech, Rhinoceros Horn LLC, and Stop Rhino Poaching Through Synthetic Rhino Horns had announced that they were developing, with varying degrees of success, fake rhino horn using elements derived from a real one. There was also chatter around creating elephant ivory, lion bones or pangolin scales—items that are sought after in the poaching black market.
The International Rhino Foundation and Save the Rhino had raised concerns over the announcements and many conservationists all over the world had said it would worsen the problem.
It would "provide a loophole into which poached rhino horn can be introduced into the market, and create huge challenges for enforcement authorities, putting the world’s remaining rhinos under even more pressure", Born Free Foundation and Born Free USA had said in a statement.
A TRAFFIC report also showed that there were preexisting fake items in the market, but it didn't impact poaching at all.
The stance hasn't changed much
"Every couple of years, a new idea that will ‘solve’ the rhino poaching crisis is unveiled with a flourish. Remember the rhino horn-cam, horn infusions or pink dye anyone?" said Cathy Dean, CEO of Save the Rhino told us in a statement. Dean says that there is no short cut to success when it comes to uprooting poaching and their enablers have to be addressed.
"At best, these are well-intentioned but ill-informed," she said of the study, "at worst they are cynical exploitation of desperate conservation managers. Uncritical media coverage of such ‘silver-bullet solutions’ is an unwelcome distraction from tackling the root causes and enablers of poaching: consumer demand, human greed, and corruption."
Richard Thomas, spokesperson for TRAFFIC is of the same opinion. He says that while it is obviously well-intentioned, it does have considerable risks with flooding the market with fake horns. It not only pushes the idea that rhino horn is something desirable thus pushing existing demand, but it could also act as a stimulant to getting their hands on the "real thing", he says. The only long term solution is a significant reduction in demand for rhino horn.
"This can be achieved through long-term consumer behavioral change interventions coupled with strong enforcement measures to deter would-be and existing consumers of rhino horn," he said.
Legal difficulties
If you flood the market with fake horns that look a lot like real ones, unlabelled, you would be confusing yourself too—posing legal difficulties, not to mention enforcement challenges, says Thomas, citing the example of the Vietnam horn market where much of the "rhino horn" is currently fake.
Vollrath, however, defended the study against the criticism it has received that speaks of its unintended consequences. "There is always the danger of that in any disruptive technology, and we have to guard against it. However, present conservation efforts, although they do work, are often clearly not sufficient because rhinos in the wild (as opposed to heavy guarded enclosed habit) are still being ‘hammered’ by poaching," he said.