The killing of rhinos by poachers has risen sharply since South Africa started easing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Their horns are cut off and trafficked mostly to Asia. Credit: AWF wildlife archive

By Guy Dinmore
St David’s, Wales, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

A recent seizure at Johannesburg’s international airport of a large consignment of rhino horns confirmed worst fears – illegal trafficking of wildlife and the plundering of treasured species is back with a vengeance after a Covid-19 lockdown lull.

Destined for Kuala Lumpur, the 32 pieces of rhino horns weighing a total of 160kg were intercepted by a sniffer dog on July 17.

Rhinos in South Africa were being killed by poachers at the rate of three a day in 2019. But with domestic and international travel restrictions imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the daily toll in 2020 fell to around one. However, a subsequent lockdown easing has given rise to “serious numbers” of rhino poaching incidents, according to WWF.

Carcases of rhinos left by poachers to bleed to death are unfortunately just one of the most visible images of the global illegal trafficking in wildlife – a multi-billion dollar industry often run by transnational syndicates, sometimes alongside trafficking in drugs, arms and people.

From the seas to the skies, the industrial-scale killing of animals, illegal logging of timber and the plundering of rare plants are driving many species to extinction.

Tigers – their bones and other body parts used in traditional medicine — are among the most threatened victims, with 97 percent of the wild tiger population estimated to have disappeared over the past century. Cheetahs are vanishing because of the demand for pets.

A quarter of shark species are now facing extinction, mostly due to illegal and unsustainable fishing. All seven remaining species of sea turtles are at risk. New species of orchids – there are about 28,000 known to science – have disappeared to collectors and thus become extinct in the wild before they are even recorded. Millions of birds are traded illegally each year. The list goes on and on.

The most trafficked mammal on earth is the pangolin, a scaly ant-eating creature. More than a million are estimated to have been poached from the wild in the last decade for their meat, skin and scales. All eight species are deemed at risk of extinction.

All eight species of pangolin, four in Asia and four in Africa, are threatened with extinction, mostly because of illegal poaching and trafficking. Credit: AWF wildlife archive

The Covid-19 pandemic has hammered home what scientists were long saying – that wildlife trafficking is also a serious threat to global security. Bats and pangolins are the focus of research into the evolutionary path of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease. A recent study by the Francis Crick Institute showed that SARS-CoV-2 could in theory have moved to humans from pangolins, after originating in a currently unknown bat coronavirus.

Three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, transferred from animals to humans, facilitated by environmental destruction and wildlife crime.

These findings only further underscore efforts by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to shape humanity’s response to the planet’s conservation crises. The IUCN World Conservation Congress, initially delayed by the pandemic and now to be held from 3-11 September in Marseille, is the world’s leading conservation event where government, civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations will join discussions, debate and vote on motions that will set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.

Two key motions tackle illegal wildlife trafficking: Motion 50 on implementing international efforts to tackle the role of cybercrime, the internet and social media in enabling traffickers, and Motion 65 on engaging the private sector to combat wildlife trafficking.

Jose Louies, a specialist in wildlife crime prevention with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a co-sponsor of Motion 50, says governments must make the illegal wildlife trade a top priority and set out clear guidelines on wildlife cybercrime. IT companies must also set policies to stop, control and monitor traffickers using their platforms.

Louies told IPS that WTI’s covert agents had been following pangolin traders online in recent months, connecting with suppliers and buyers from several countries.

Pangolin scales sold illegally through the internet by wildlife traffickers. The pangolin, sometimes called a scaly anteater, is the world’s most trafficked mammal. Credit: Jose Louies / Wildlife Trust of India.

“Most of these leads were picked up from a single social media platform where the buyers and sellers posted comments with email ids/ phone numbers to connect,” he added. ”We had 114 buyers and 69 sellers,” he said, naming the sample countries as Pakistan, Nepal, Iraq, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and 17 states in India.

“The use of social media and messaging apps to build connections between suspects at various levels of trade is a serious matter of concern. Such fluidic and organic systems will enable a network to regenerate quicker than a conventional network.”

WTI sees IUCN as the leading global body to make recommendations and influence policies, regardless of political borders, and to act as an enabler for global conservation policies and practices. “Conservation is not an exclusive job of conservationists – it’s the collective efforts of everyone,” says Louies.

Among the various elements of Motion 50, IUCN members call on governments to strengthen legislation to tackle cyber-enabled wildlife trafficking; collaborate more in cross-border investigations; encourage and protect whistle-blowers; and encourage technology companies to step up efforts to stop online trafficking.

Known as Hatha Jodi, these dried penises of the monitor lizard were sold illegally by traffickers online. Credit: Jose Louies / Wildlife Trust of India.

The Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, launched in 2018, now brings together over 40 companies from across the world in partnership with wildlife experts at WWF, TRAFFIC, and IFAW for an industry-wide approach to shut down online marketplaces for wildlife traffickers

The latest companies to join are China’s Douyin, a popular short video social media platform, and Huya, a video game company.
As the Coalition admits, advances in technology and connectivity, combined with rising buying power and demand for illegal wildlife products, have increased the ease of exchange from poacher to consumer. ”A largely unregulated online market allows criminals to sell illegally obtained wildlife products across the globe. Purchasing elephant ivory, tiger cubs, and pangolin scales is as easy as click, pay, ship.”

But despite such coordinated efforts, including GLACY+ involving Interpol, trafficking is getting even bigger.

“In Africa, cybercrime is escalating on many platforms via the internet,” says Philip Muruthi, vice president of the African Wildlife Foundation, also a co-sponsor of Motion 50. “You just need to do a Google search and you will find someone trying to sell some wildlife product or wildlife… but the capacity to deal with wildlife cybercrime is very low across the board. This is something that we have noted across Africa – a growing silent problem – for which we have limited knowledge and capacity to turn around.”

AWF has a program to train and equip law enforcement officers to combat wildlife cybercrime, starting in Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but governments and other players could do much more, Muruthi tells IPS.

“What is agreed at these IUCN World Conservation Congresses often results in enhanced collective action. The issue of wildlife cybercrime may be elusive at a glance but deep analyses reveals it warrants local, regional and global attention,” Muruthi adds.

Stressing the importance of its unique structure spanning governments, NGOs, the private sector, individuals and indigenous peoples, AWF also benefits from being able to access more potential collaborators and span disciplines and themes.

Steven Galster, chair of Freeland which describes itself as a “lean, frontline international NGO with a team of law enforcement, development and communications specialists” fighting wildlife trafficking and human slavery, says traffickers are winning an unequal battle. Richer countries are not backing up their political promises with action, he says.

“I’m a big fan of IUCN. It’s an important body,” Galster tells IPS, praising IUCN’s Asia team. But he urges IUCN to shift priorities.

More broadly, Freeland, a co-sponsor of Motion 065, is calling on IUCN to go further and push for a global suspension of commercial trade in wild animals as a matter of urgency to save biodiversity and avoid another pandemic, rather than just trying to stamp out illegal wildlife trade as defined by CITES conventions.

“Legal trade also carries virus transmission risks. There remains so much unknown about the many viruses out there, and how they may mutate, that we should not be confining our containment to only some species of families of animals,” Galster says. ”The precautionary principle should be pushed harder than ever in wake of Covid-19.”

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A white rhino at a sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo province. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, May 15 2013 (IPS)

At first glance, the poster appears to be a typical advertisement for an African safari: a large rhinoceros set against a rugged, open terrain. Then you take a closer look and realise something is amiss.

A cluster of human hands has replaced the two horns that distinguish this African animal from the single-horned Indian and Javan rhino. A message over the creature’s head reads: “Rhino horn is made of the same stuff as human nails. Still want some?”

Produced jointly by the wildlife watchdogs TRAFFIC and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), these posters are soon to appear on the walls of public places in major Vietnamese cities including the capital, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City.

Offices, apartment buildings and even airports are all set to become sites in the campaign to end the illegal international trade in rhino horns that is threatening the ungulate to extinction.

Experts say there is no better place than this Southeast Asian nation of 87 million to drive this stark message home. Vietnam has long been singled out by international groups monitoring the illicit wildlife trade for the dramatic rise in domestic demand for African rhino horns.

Close to 290 of the 20,000 rhinos left in South Africa have been killed for their horns since the beginning of this year, according to conservationists worried that such a deadly spree could see the death toll match the record number of 668 rhinos killed by poachers in 2012.

“We are in the midst of a rhino poaching crisis,” Mark Jones, a British veterinarian who heads the London-based Humane Society International, told IPS, adding that Vietnam has recently emerged as the main market for rhino horns.

The spike in demand has been shaped by a belief among locals that has taken root over the past five years: that rhino horn has special medicinal powers, including the ability to treat cancer, cure hangovers, and act as an aphrodisiac.

According to Naomi Doak, coordinator of the Greater Mekong Programme at TRAFFIC, the graphics for the new campaign poster were developed after experts realised that a “large proportion of the Vietnamese public” were not aware that rhino horn, a mass of agglutinated hair, is comprised of keratin, the same basic substance that constitutes human finger and toenails.

She hopes that bringing this fact to light will make people “think twice before consuming rhino horn.”

Yet driving home this message will be “a long and difficult campaign,” Doak admitted in an interview with IPS. “With very few penalties and consequences people really aren’t that concerned about the impacts the consumption of rhino (horn) has either on the animals or on people.”

A status symbol

To understand what wildlife protection groups are up against, one need only take a stroll through Hanoi’s famed Old Quarter, a colourful network of 36 streets where crafts and local products have been hawked for centuries.

Here, shops specialising in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) attract scores of customers seeking remedies made from wild animal parts, including rhino horn.

In his latest documentary ‘Bad Medicine – Illegal Trade in Rhinoceros Horns’, conservationist and filmmaker Karl Amman traces the routes of illegal traffickers from the Africans wilds to the streets of Vietnam, where “rhino horns have also become a status symbol,” he said.

This explains why gold, once the favourite gift among the communist-ruled country’s expanding class of wealthy citizens, has been dethroned by rhino horns, which currently fetch 65,000 dollars per kilogramme.

This is “more than gold, gram for gram,” according to Jones. Though the weight of rhino horns vary, an individual horn can fetch upto 150,000 dollars.

The pressure on Vietnam to curb the demand for illegal rhino horns is expected to grow following the resolutions passed in March at the Bangkok meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The strong language at this 16^th global gathering of 178 member countries fell just short of imposing sanctions on Hanoi.

The Vietnamese government, meanwhile, has consistently denied allegations that it is a major market in this global trade. It often points an accusing finger at its powerful northern neighbour, China, which is also under scrutiny for boosting the illegal wildlife trade, particularly the demand for tiger parts.

But activists have proof, and are not prepared to remain silent.

Do Quang Tung, deputy director of CITES Vietnam, who headed his country’s delegation to the Bangkok talks, told a Vietnamese newspaper in late March, “From 2004 until now, 13 (individuals) involved in rhino trafficking were arrested, with a total of 150 kg of rhino horns.” Two of these cases, he said, occurred in early 2013.

“Illegal trade in rhino horns involves highly organised, mobile and well-financed criminal groups, mainly composed of Asian nationals based in Africa,” a report published by TRAFFIC and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed early this year.

“These networks have recruited pseudo-hunters including Vietnamese citizens, Thai prostitutes and proxy hunters from the Czech Republic and Poland to obtain rhino horns in South Africa,” added the report.

“Pseudo-hunting has significantly reduced as a result of a decision to prevent nationals of Vietnam from obtaining hunting licenses and changes to South African law in April 2012.”

Another embarrassment for Vietnam has been scandals involving its diplomats at the South African mission who were accused of smuggling rhino horns in 2006 and 2008. When confronted about these incidents at the recent CITES meeting in Bangkok, a Vietnamese government official said that the errant diplomats had received “punishment” for their actions.

Hopes are running high that the impending poster campaign will do its part to educate the public and bring an end to the thriving trade. But it will take more than two animal rights groups to halt rising demand.

Nguyen Thuy Quynh, of WWF Vietnam, said recently, “We are seeking support and cooperation from many businesses, celebrities, universities, international organisations and mass media who all have an important voice in reaching and influencing the community.”

Kaziranga National Park in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, is home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world. Credit: Ranjita Biswas/IPS

By Ranjita Biswas
GUWAHATI, India, Apr 21 2013 (IPS)

The year 2013 opened on a disastrous note for the one-horned rhinoceros of the northeastern Indian state of Assam. At the beginning of April, officials in the Kaziranga National Park (KNP), one of the last retreats left in South Asia for these endangered creatures, reported that 17 rhinos had been poached.

The ungulate is also found in other protected reserves throughout Assam, namely the Manas National Park in the foothills of the Himalayas on the border of Bhutan, Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, not far from the Assamese capital Guwahati and Orang National Park, which sits on the northern banks of the Brahmaputra river, one of the largest in Asia.

But most of the killings happen in KNP, home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world. The park’s resident tiger population, along with its tall grasses, marshlands and moist tropical forest areas that support a high density of biodiversity, earned it the title of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

“We sometimes find a rhino…still breathing, its horn cut and taken away…Once we found a mother killed and the baby helplessly circling around her.”
When the British colonialists declared Kaziranga a game sanctuary in 1916, there were an estimated 20 rhinos left in the park. Large-scale destruction of rhino habitat across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and rampant hunting had all but wiped out the animal, with the few remaining creatures confined to pockets in the northeast.

A period of relative calm between 1983 and 1989 saw the total number of rhinos killed reach 235. From that point onwards, officials reported only sporadic poaching.

Herculean efforts by wildlife conservationists has today brought the number of rhinos up to 2,329 according to the recently concluded wildlife census of India (2013). This number is a slight increase from the recorded population of 2,290 in 2012, Sanjib Kumar Bora, conservator of forests for KNP, told IPS.

Now, poaching seems to be making a comeback, with officials fretting over the number of corpses they find scattered throughout the park.

The word rhinoceros is derived from the Greek “rhinokerōs” meaning “horn-nosed”. This horn, which is a mass of agglutinated hair, is exactly what has marked this creature out as a target, since a single horn weighing 750 grammes fetches as much as six million rupees (111,000 dollars), according to reports last year.

This exorbitant price is justified by the aphrodisiacal properties ascribed to the horn, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. Many Chinese hold the belief that emperors used powdered rhino horn to great effect in the harems of ancient China, though modern researchers and scientists have debunked this myth, and prescribe the horn only for certain life-threatening fevers and convulsions.

Numerous international campaigns have been unable to put a complete stop to the practice, and this latest killing spree has park officials worried.

As soon as rangers receive word that poachers are on the prowl, they rush to the scene. Often, they are too late. An official speaking under condition of anonymity told IPS, “We sometimes find a rhino…still breathing, its horn cut and taken away…Once we found a mother killed and the baby helplessly circling around her.”

KNP is currently divided into five ranges: Bagori, Kohora, Agoratoli, Burha Pahar and Northern Range. Plans to add two additional protected areas are in the works, making a total of seven. The sprawling layout of the 860-square-kilometre park is perhaps one of the reasons for the rise in poaching.

“We are running short of staff,” D. Mathur, additional principal chief conservator of forests in Assam, told IPS. “With the additional areas added to the original Kaziranga Park and the animal count rising, there are some bottlenecks in keeping vigil.”

Regular and casual forest guards now number roughly 700 in total, but Bora says even these are inadequate to effectively patrol the large reserve.

Poachers have worked out an efficient system that enables them to evade the watered-down park security force.

Locals from the surrounding area known as “spotters” connive with sharpshooters from neighbouring states like Nagaland, Bora said. These are professional snipers, who live in the park for up to three days at a stretch in pursuit of their quarry, striking in the early morning hours or at the onset of dusk, often using guns with silencers so as to remain undetected.

That it is a creature of habit makes the rhino easy prey – the animal always returns to the same spot to defecate, so a spotter simply has to find a pile of dung and lie in wait.

Poachers are emboldened by the “escalation of the price of the horn in the international market, especially in Vietnam”, Suresh Chand, principal chief conservator of forests for Assam, told IPS.

But money is not the primary form of exchange — sources say the horn is frequently bartered for arms and ammunition for separatist rebels in this insurgency-ridden region. Smugglers favour a route through the town of Moreh in Manipur state, or mountain passes in the surrounding hills.

The recent killings have made the central authorities sit up. According to Chand, “We now have a Forest Protection Force deploying a battalion of 535 personnel exclusively… in Kaziranga. They work with Home Guards (an official paramilitary force), who man the 157 outreach camps across the park.”

Home Guards usually carry .303 rifles but since the poachers now have access to weapons like AK-47s, the central government has agreed to provide arms and ammunition in the AK series and park rangers are now awaiting the delivery of the first batch.

In 2010, the Assam government set a trend by giving forest officials the licence to fire on poachers without fear of criminal proceedings.

For the first time, Bora said, sniffer dogs are being used to track down poachers in Kaziranga. Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are also being used to track movement of poachers, he added.

Conservationists say that the impending monsoon season (June to September) could spell disaster for the animals, as heavy rains will force rhinos to emerge from the marshlands into the open plains for safety, putting them directly in the poachers’ line of fire.

White Rhino at sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 18 2013 (IPS)

In the face of rampant rhino poaching in South Africa, some conservationists and private rhino farmers are lobbying for removal of the international ban on rhino horn trading and the creation of a legal market, to quell poaching.

“The trade ban is creating a situation where rhinos are being killed unnecessarily,” Duan Biggs, research fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at Australia’s University of Queensland, told IPS. “It’s taking resources away from other conservation efforts, and is leading to the situation where there’s a pseudo war taking place in the Kruger National Park.”

The South African government is exploring this option and could make a proposal at the 2016 Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to allow it to open up rhino horn sales. That would require support from a two-thirds majority of the 178 member states.

Proposals to lift the ban, which has been in place since 1977, have sparked debate about whether a legal market would actually curb poaching. Opponents worry that it would stimulate the black market trade that exists in parts of Asia, where rhino horn sells for 65,000 dollars a kilogramme – more than gold or cocaine – and is touted as a cure for hangovers and an aphrodisiac in countries like Vietnam.

But advocates say it would be the solution to the poaching crisis.

Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa, mainly in the Kruger National Park, which houses the world’s largest population of white rhino.

In an Apr. 3 press statement, the government said that the number of rhinos killed since the start of 2013 totalled 203. Poaching has roughly doubled each year over the past five years in South Africa.

If poaching continues at the current rate, the Kruger National Park’s rhino population will start to decline from 2016, according to South African National Parks researchers. Worse, scientists estimate that if poaching accelerates, Africa’s rhino could be extinct in the wild in just 20 years.

A tightly-regulated market would offer a way to supply the persistent Asian demand, and, if properly administered, prove cheaper, safer and more reliable for buyers than purchasing from criminal cartels. This would draw buyers away from the illegal market, explains Biggs, who co-authored a paper in the March issue of the journal Science calling for the introduction of legal trade.

“The idea is to cut (illegal traders) out of the market,” Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, an independent conservation economist who researches the rhino horn trade, told IPS. “They are dealing in a lot of other products. If it becomes unattractive to them they’ll simply switch to something else.”

The legal trade in crocodile skins, which during the 1980s led to a shift toward sustainable crocodile ranching instead of the slaughter of wild crocodiles, is an example of how legal trade can drive conservation, says Biggs.

To be effective, advocates propose that an independent body – a central selling organisation – that reports to CITES would run the market and sell horns to registered buyers. Part of the revenue from sales would be channelled to conservation efforts and used to strengthen anti-poaching initiatives.

Rhino horn is made of keratin, found in human hair, and grows back after being cut. Sedating rhino and shaving off their horns carries “completely minimal risk” to the animals, says Biggs.

To stop poached horn from entering the legal market, suppliers can fit legal horns with traceable transponders and DNA signatures for less than 200 dollars per horn, he says.

Not convinced

But various conservation groups oppose legal trade. They argue that legalisation could drive demand for rhino horn to a point the market could not sustain and create a situation where the criminal market would flourish alongside the legal one, as is the case with abalone, which is severely threatened by poaching in South Africa.

Mary Rice, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, an independent organisation committed to investigating and exposing environmental crime, points to the spike in illegal ivory sales in China after it legally bought stockpiles of ivory from Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 2008.

The Chinese government bought ivory for 157 dollars/kg but sells it for up to 1,500 dollars/kg. Retailers, however, sell ivory products for as much as 7,000 dollars, according to an Environmental Investigation Agency report.

But as much as 90 percent of the ivory that enters the market in China is illegal, according to the report.

“Legal ivory is now more expensive than illegal ivory, and what you have is the biggest upsurge in poaching since the (1989) ban (on international ivory trade),” Rice told IPS.

Legal trade opponents are concerned governments would not be able to adequately police the rhino horn market, and cite corruption as a problem. Last year, police arrested four South African National Parks officials in connection with rhino poaching, who are out on bail.

Accurate figures for the actual size of the rhino horn market are not available.

“We don’t know what the demand is, and if we open trade we don’t know what the demand will become,” Allison Thomson, director of activist group Outraged SA Citizens Against Poaching, told IPS. “If you open that door and increase the demand, if it’s the wrong thing to do, to close that door is going to be absolutely impossible.”