Rhinos are on the brink of extinction. Forget the old poachers, who used to hunt the beasts with rifles on foot, in the dark.
The new poachers are mercenaries procuring the highly prized rhino horns by riding on helicopters and using war grade weapons. The rhinos are then amputated of their horns with chainsaws and left to die in the savannah.
But a few things are changing: one of them is the introduction of a colorant chemical in the horn which would destroy the so called 'benefit' of the horn itself, which is powdered to extract what is deemed by Chinese and other Asians as an aphrodisiac and essential medicine against any ill, including cancer, although the horn has been proven to be completely devoid of any physical benefit for humans.
The new stratagem employed by African park rangers and conservationists is the implantation of microchip on the horn itself, which will not only track them but identify the horns if they are cut.
More than 1,000 microchips and five scanners were donated by the WWF to implement a wide ranging tracking system that will enable rangers to monitor every rhino in Kenya.
If the horn should be removed, the rangers will be able to track it all over the world and match it to the carcass of the killed animal.
Most of the time, the horn is cut to the root by the poachers, so that the rhino dies an inevitably slow death. If the horn were removed a few inches higher, the animal could survive the cut. But the greed of the poachers is such that a few inches means more money, since the horns are valued higher than gold on the black markets.
Source: NBC/ 10.18.13
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