A new anti-poaching technique may be able to save rhinos from the slow creep toward extinction, the Guardian reported: removing their horns.
A new study published in Science detailed how conservationists in the Greater Kruger region of South Africa reduced poaching by almost 80% between 2017 and 2023, simply by dehorning the rhinos before the poachers could get to them.
The logic is straightforward. Rhinoceros horn is prized as a traditional medicine ingredient in Asia, including China and Vietnam. Due to its supposed effectiveness at treating fevers, pain, and low sex drive, a single horn is worth tens of thousands of dollars. That's what drives a large part of the poaching in the first place. Remove the horn, and you remove the temptation, leaving the animal itself alive and free to reproduce.
Similar initiatives to make rhino horns unappealing for poachers have been tried before, such as one program that treated horns with radioactive isotopes. The radioactive horns would be easier to detect at borders and would not be fit for human consumption.
In this case, complete removal of the horn was more effective than any number of expensive anti-poaching measures employed in the past.
"Dehorning rhinos to reduce incentives for poaching was found to achieve a 78% reduction in poaching using just 1.2% of the overall rhino protection budget," said Dr. Tim Kuiper of Nelson Mandela University, this study's lead author, per the Guardian. "We might need to rethink our goals. Do we just want to arrest poachers? It doesn't appear to be making a massive difference to reducing rhino poaching."
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Dehorning isn't permanent, as the horn grows back over the course of one and a half to two years. That means it has a very low long-term impact on the animal's health, while greatly increasing its odds of survival.
There were some behavioral effects on black rhinos, so this isn't a permanent solution.
"We wouldn't like to keep dehorning them for the next 100 years," Kuiper said. "Ideally we would like to address the drivers of poaching. But it is better than the impacts of poaching."
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