There's an Effective Way to Deter Rhino Poachers, a New Study Finds
Wildlife managers in Africa tend to take a big-stick approach to combating poaching. Vast sums have been poured into militarized ranger patrols, advanced surveillance technologies, sniffer dogs and helicopters. Many of those efforts are aimed at protecting rhinos, whose horns are still in demand in China and Vietnam.
For all the resources invested in rhinos, however, a relatively affordable and straightforward tactic seems to be most effective at preventing their killing: removing their horns.
According to research published on Thursday in the journal Science, dehorning resulted in a 78 percent decline in rhino poaching in eight reserves in Southern Africa. Law enforcement efforts, on the other hand, showed less success. Despite the arrests of hundreds of poaching suspects, the researchers found that aggressive law enforcement did not translate into significant reductions in rhino deaths.
'For decades, tackling wildlife crime has involved catching and arresting poachers,' said Timothy Kuiper, who teaches statistics and nature conservation at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and who was the lead author on the paper. 'Our study suggests that we need to strategically rethink whether that's sustainable and is really making step changes.'
The new research also answers an urgent need for robust data about dehorning, said Vanessa Duthé, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University who studies rhinos and was not involved in the paper. 'Although dehorning is widespread, it is also met with a lot of criticism regarding its true efficacy and cost,' Dr. Duthé said. 'This study shows that the benefits of dehorning largely outweigh the costs.'
Rhino dehorning became a common strategy in Southern Africa as poaching ramped up a decade or so ago. The procedure, which is thought to be painless, involves sedating rhinos and then sawing off the tops of their horns, above the nerves. Like trimmed fingernails, the horns grow back. In the case of rhinos, they usually do so within about 18 months.
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