The current score since 2010 is … humans 414, rhinos 0.  We brought rhinos back from the brink of extinction in the 80s – it looks as if all the hard-won gains in rhino conservation have all been for nothing.  The illegal hunting of rhino for their horn is increasing beyond limits that the population of our beloved black and white rhino can sustain.

South Africa is home to about 80% of the world’s rhino population. Two-thirds of our rhino are in our national parks.  Almost everyone, from the game farmer to the man in the street, is perturbed by the rise in rhino poaching over the last few years.

The reasons are not hard to find.  The main markets for rhino horn are in Asia, and Asia is currently experiencing a prosperity boom. The demand for rhino horn is increasing, and criminal syndicates are always ready to meet demand.  Our borders are porous, people living alongside game reserves are poor, an AK47 costs about R200, the poacher will happily kill a rhino for a few hundred rand, and the crime boss is happy to have a horn worth about $250 000.  With profits like those, the only surprise is that we have any rhinos left at all.  Even diplomats are getting in on the act, using their diplomatic immunity to carry the horn quite openly past any controls.   

So what’s the deal with rhino horn?  It’s not just an aphrodisiac, as popular belief would have it, but apparently it cures almost anything from anaemia to cancer.  It also makes a real cool dagger handle.  We can’t argue against the dagger handle (although they make equally cool plastic ones these days) but science has been firm for decades about the health benefits of rhino horn.  It’s more or less the same as horses’ hooves, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, so the benefits would be identical if you ground up your nail clippings and drank them instead.

But this message is not getting through to the masses who buy powdered rhino horn in the murky markets of the East, and so the rhino numbers keep getting smaller.  South Africa is getting the worst end of the deal – poaching is making the value of live rhino drop, while making them more expensive to look after.

There is a lot of debate about how to curtail our loss.  A total ban on trade in rhino horn had an effect for many years but the rising demand has made smuggling too difficult to resist. Genetic marking also had an effect but illegal trade just got brisker and smarter.  The idea to farm rhino for their horn – cutting it off surgically and allowing it to re-grow (it grows at the rate of about 30mm per year) – is gaining some popularity but rangers argue that a horn is vital to the animal for mating rituals and defence.  To this end, an association of hunters, game conservationists, vets and wildlife experts will be launching a project on April 15 to research and investigate horn farming. It’s a touchy subject for many and the supply of farmed horn will never satisfy the demand.  An alternative suggestion is to come up with fake rhino horn and to flood the market, thereby bringing down the price and discrediting the whole trade. 

Another solution is to work on educating the consumer about the fallacies of rhino horn as a universal panacea but it’s going to take a while:  Eastern philosophy has lauded rhino horn as a medicine for 5 000 years and in Vietnam alone there are 11 colleges, 20 hospitals, 4 700 clinics, 7 000 medical practitioners and 2 352 chemists solely focused on Eastern medicine that includes tiger bone and rhino horn (says the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Pretoria, which researches these things).

The most sinister aspect to the rise in rhino poaching, according to conservation journalist, Fiona McLeod, is that criminal syndicates are stockpiling horn in anticipation of rhinos becoming extinct.  And the most sinister of all is that the culprits in many cases are the very vets and conservation officials who are supposed to be tasked with rhino preservation.

But there’s a huge question that really needs to be asked: where are governments in all this?  Here you have one group of countries that are actively destroying a tourist and heritage asset of another.  Why aren’t Eastern governments being asked – nicely of course – if they could lead the charge to dispel these fallacies about our most controversial export?  Why aren’t diplomats being closely watched?   Rhino horn is openly sold in street markets – why no attempt to clamp down on its sale?  Why is there no more robust discussion about why Asia is clinging to a 5 000-year-old discredited custom that is leading to irreversible extinction?

And of course, the main question:  at the current rate of consumption of rhino horn and tiger bones, these species don’t have much longer to go on this planet.  And when that happens…. what will you use for your cure-all then, my China?