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Open trade in rhino horn? The only market-based approach I'd tolerate would be the development and flooding of the market with an indistinguishable synthetic horn designed to trigger impotence in all the idiots who buy it.
The answer isn't in economics. It isn't even in protecting rhinos. The answer is to educate all the stupid men of the world that still believe that eating something shaped like a penis will increase their virility. That myth is the real issue. I really don't care whether such things are part of any culture or belief system. You don't get to wipe out such a species because you cannot bother to exercise enough to keep it up on your own.
Rhinoceros horn is not used as an aphrodisiac, rather to treat fevers. (of course it doesn't actually treat fevers either) That aside, there are quite a few people who have misconceptions about medicine; it seems noble but very difficult to correct them all.
Why do you oppose market-based solutions? If any solution prevented some large percent of poaching incidents, would it not be a net improvement?
> If any solution prevented some large percent of poaching incidents, would it not be a net improvement?
Perhaps for the Rhino, a single species, but this isn't just about them. Tigers, bears, lions, elephants ... nearly everything bigger and more powerful than humans gets chopped up for "traditional medicine". We cannot start farming each and every critter some group thinks is magic.
Market-based approaches are also an acknowledgment of the underlying mythology. I'm generally opposed to all quack medicine. Most of us are annoyed but not screaming mad when we see homeopathic junk for sale a drugstores. We laugh, try to educate our friends, and perhaps sign a petition to ban such practices. But if I see baby rhino horns for sale at WholeFoods expect blood.
I'm with you. Because the idiots imbibing potions concocted with rhino horn are no doubt going to convince themselves that the "real stuff" is made from wild rhinos, and that the stuff made from the farmed version is inferior.
In my fantasy world, we convince the Chinese that the ground up bones of poachers makes one's dick hard.
That isn't very far fetched. That was England not very long ago.
"However, consuming human remains fit with the leading medical theories of the day. “It emerged from homeopathic ideas,” says Noble. “It’s 'like cures like.' So you eat ground-up skull for pains in the head.” http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-o...
> Proponents argue that an open trade would flood the market and deflate the bubble—the street value of horn currently stands at $100,000 a kilogram, more than that of cocaine—driving down the incentive to poach.
It would not decrease the value enough to make poaching not profitable for the poachers. Proposals like this one are very frequent but none of them address the issue of how exactly are the animals living in the wild protected against poaching. The assumption seems to be that as long as there are ranchers raising these animals for profit, the species should be protected. It does not address the issue of what will happen to the species once the demand for rhino horn plummets.
These legalized sales are very unpredictable. For example, the current ivory poaching crisis is attributed to the 2008 CITES reclassification of ivory that let some African countries sell their ivory stockpiles to China and Japan. This event caused an increase in demand for ivory products in China and Japan and the demand for ivory has been increasing year over year since then. As a result, poaching has skyrocketed to meet the demand.
If you live in Washington state, please support Initiative 1401 (http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org) on the November state ballot. This initiative will help with reducing the amount of illegal wildlife products coming to the US. Most of these products come to the US from China so ports in Washington state are a prime destination for the ships smuggling these products. California has recently passed a similar law.
I've recently started volunteering with the campaign and we are looking for more volunteers who would help out with the campaign efforts. If you live in Washington state and have 2 hours of free time every now and then and want to help out, email me at adamnemecek at gmail.com.
I suspect that these proposals are partly due to desperation. Nothing else seems to be working; At least if we're farming them there's an incentive to keep enough alive that they won't go extinct.
The thing though is that these proposals usually come from groups that are not exactly impartial. These include e.g. Safari Clubs, "anti-environmentalist think tanks", ranchers and other groups who would gain from free trade of wildlife products.
> Nothing else seems to be working;
That's the thing though, not much has been tried as far as bans go. The current bans leave a lot of loopholes so getting around the restrictions isn't exactly hard.
While that's some consolation, the loss of genetic diversity within the species is tragic.
It might work if their were an appreciable increase in the African standard of living as well. As it is, the price of horn could be $100 per kg and there would still be someone poor enough to poach. However, it would at least reduce the drive to poach substantially, and that may be enough for the Rhino to survive.
On the other hand, we may have to face the fact that in the modern world large wild animals simply aren't going to survive. It seems sad, of course, but there is really nothing super-natural about it. Many more species have gone extinct naturally than currently roam the earth. Perhaps it is for the best. There is a reason we humans left the trees and created civilization. Surviving in the wild is hard. The larger (and generally smarter) animals have some awareness of this and probably, if given a choice, would choose a "civilized" existence as well. If we make the effort to make zoos very accommodating to the needs of animals (which means putting a lot more money into them) then I think that is the future --and a generally better one for all.
I wouldn't be surprised if the African poachers were already making around $100 per kg; a lot of that money goes to the cartels (and government officials who have been bribed to look the other way).
It's a lot less than that actually, it's on the order of hundreds of dollar per tusk (a male elephant's tusk weight ~50+kg). And you are right, the people who are making money from this are up to no good, a lot of these groups are militias and terrorist organizations. There was a recent article about this in National Geographic
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking-ivory/article.htm...
How about reprisals against people associated with consumers?
Your corporate officer buys rhino horn or elephant tusks, sanction the company. Put employees on no-visa lists, make money transfers painful, etc.
That would be unconstitutional in the US.
There was an absolutely fascinating and emotionally grueling episode of RadioLab last week that is kind of related to this topic:
They're almost gone, aren't they? Damn shame. Just a shame.
You may be thinking of the Northern White Rhino which is found (or was found) in Northern Parts of Africa. These are Southern White Rhinos which are still endangered, but not as bad off as their Northern brethren. Southern and Northern White Rhinos are different species (or sub-species).
Not an expert by any means, just sharing what little I know about it ;)