Study reveals cutting off rhino horns significantly reduces poaching
Donors from Friends of African Wildlife during a rhino conservation experience.
Image: Southern African Wildlife College
The best and cheapest way to protect rhinos, whose population has plummeted over the last 15 years because of poaching, is to cut off their horns, according to researchers who carried out a seven-year study in southern Africa.
The analysis of poaching before and after the de-horning of almost 2,300 rhinos showed that removing the keratin-based protrusions cut the crime by 78%. The researchers are from three South African universities - Nelson Mandela, Stellenbosch and Cape Town - and the UK's University of Oxford. Over that period, poachers killed almost 2,000 rhinos in the area under study.
It covered 10 reserves in South Africa's Greater Kruger region - a network of public and private conservation land that encompasses an area bigger than Israel - between 2017 and 2023, as well as an adjacent sanctuary in Mozambique. Together, the region hosts the world's biggest concentration of rhinos.
'De-horning rhinos is associated with large and abrupt reductions in poaching,' the researchers said in the study published in the Science journal on Thursday.
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In the first quarter of 2025, 103 rhinos were poached across South Africa, 65 of those within national parks. Although the country recorded a 16% overall decline in poaching last year, increases in key areas such as Kruger National Park underscore the need for continued vigilance and interventions such as dehorning.
Image: Southern African Wildlife College
Poachers have had rhinos in South Africa, where almost all of the world's population of the endangered animals live, under siege for more than a decade. They shoot the animals with assault rifles, often by the light of the full moon, and then hack off their horns. Those are ground down into powder and used in potions erroneously believed to cure cancer and boost virility, primarily in East Asia.
The practice of de-horning also accounted for just 1.2% of the $74 million spent by the reserves on anti-poaching programs in the four years to 2021, the researchers said. That money went toward a range of measures including 500 rangers deployed across the reserves at any one time as well as cameras and tracking dogs.
Still, even though de-horning cut the annual chance of an individual rhino being poached to 0.6% by the end of the study period from 13% at the start, there were instances of criminals killing rhinos to harvest the stumps that had been left after the horn removal, they said.
That means that conservationists can't abandon other anti-poaching measures entirely, they said. Poachers could also start targeting other areas containing rhinos that still have horns.
The number of rhinos - both of the white and less common black variety - killed illegally in South Africa last year fell to 420 from a peak of 1,215 a decade earlier. That improvement was partially due to de-horning exercises, according to Dion George, the nation's environment minister.
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5 hours ago
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Study reveals cutting off rhino horns significantly reduces poaching
Donors from Friends of African Wildlife during a rhino conservation experience. Image: Southern African Wildlife College The best and cheapest way to protect rhinos, whose population has plummeted over the last 15 years because of poaching, is to cut off their horns, according to researchers who carried out a seven-year study in southern Africa. The analysis of poaching before and after the de-horning of almost 2,300 rhinos showed that removing the keratin-based protrusions cut the crime by 78%. The researchers are from three South African universities - Nelson Mandela, Stellenbosch and Cape Town - and the UK's University of Oxford. Over that period, poachers killed almost 2,000 rhinos in the area under study. It covered 10 reserves in South Africa's Greater Kruger region - a network of public and private conservation land that encompasses an area bigger than Israel - between 2017 and 2023, as well as an adjacent sanctuary in Mozambique. Together, the region hosts the world's biggest concentration of rhinos. 'De-horning rhinos is associated with large and abrupt reductions in poaching,' the researchers said in the study published in the Science journal on Thursday. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ In the first quarter of 2025, 103 rhinos were poached across South Africa, 65 of those within national parks. Although the country recorded a 16% overall decline in poaching last year, increases in key areas such as Kruger National Park underscore the need for continued vigilance and interventions such as dehorning. Image: Southern African Wildlife College Poachers have had rhinos in South Africa, where almost all of the world's population of the endangered animals live, under siege for more than a decade. They shoot the animals with assault rifles, often by the light of the full moon, and then hack off their horns. Those are ground down into powder and used in potions erroneously believed to cure cancer and boost virility, primarily in East Asia. The practice of de-horning also accounted for just 1.2% of the $74 million spent by the reserves on anti-poaching programs in the four years to 2021, the researchers said. That money went toward a range of measures including 500 rangers deployed across the reserves at any one time as well as cameras and tracking dogs. Still, even though de-horning cut the annual chance of an individual rhino being poached to 0.6% by the end of the study period from 13% at the start, there were instances of criminals killing rhinos to harvest the stumps that had been left after the horn removal, they said. That means that conservationists can't abandon other anti-poaching measures entirely, they said. Poachers could also start targeting other areas containing rhinos that still have horns. The number of rhinos - both of the white and less common black variety - killed illegally in South Africa last year fell to 420 from a peak of 1,215 a decade earlier. That improvement was partially due to de-horning exercises, according to Dion George, the nation's environment minister.
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4 days ago
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Dehorning of rhinos slashed poaching: study
JOHANNESBURG - The dehorning of rhinos resulted in a nearly 80 percent reduction in the poaching of the animals during a seven-year study in a major South African conservation area, researchers said. Sawing off the sought-after horns was also a fraction of the cost of other counter-poaching measures such as deploying rangers or tracking dogs, according to the study published in the journal Science. The study was carried out between 2017 and 2023 in 11 reserves around South Africa's famed Kruger National Park that protect the world's largest rhino population. During this period, some 1,985 rhinos were poached in the reserves in the Greater Kruger area despite $74 million spent mostly on reactive law enforcement measures that netted around 700 poachers, it said. By contrast, dehorning 2,284 rhinos cut poaching by 78 percent at just 1.2 percent of that budget, said the study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Some poaching of dehorned rhinos continued because poachers targeted horn stumps and regrowth, signalling the need for regular dehorning alongside judicious use of law enforcement," the study said. South Africa is home to most of the world's rhinos, including the critically endangered black rhino, and is a hotspot for poaching driven by demand in Asia where the horns are used in traditional medicine. Rhino horn is highly sought after on the black market, where the price by weight rivals that of gold and cocaine. Alongside ivory, the horns are coveted as status symbols or used in traditional medicine for their supposed aphrodisiac properties. "Ongoing socioeconomic inequality incentivises a large pool of vulnerable and motivated people to join, or poach for, criminal syndicates even when the risks are high," the researchers said. Corruption also played a role with gangs receiving insider tips to evade detection and arrest, they said. - Impacts unclear - "Although detecting and arresting poachers is essential, strategies that focus on reducing opportunities for and rewards from poaching may be more effective," the study said. It added, however, that "the effects of dehorning on rhino biology are still unclear, with present research suggesting that dehorning may alter rhino space use but not survival and reproduction." The co-authors of the study are from South Africa's Nelson Mandela University and the University of Cape Town, and various conservation groups including the Wildlife Conservation Network and United Kingdom's Save the Rhino International. South Africa had more than 16,000 rhinos at the end of 2023, mostly white rhinos, according to government data. But at least 34 rhinos were killed each month, the environment minister said in May. In 2024, South African scientists injected radioactive material into live rhino horns to make them easier to detect at border posts in a pioneering project aimed at curbing poaching. The radioactive material would not impact the animal's health or the environment in any way but make it poisonous for human consumption, according to the University of the Witwatersrand's radiation and health physics unit which spearheaded the initiative. Black rhinos are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered.
