Status drives demand for rhino horn

MEDICAL demand for rhino horn is dropping off and status is now the main driver behind demand for the product in Vietnam.

Making the point at a rhino poaching briefing yesterday, Wilderness Foundation Africa CEO Matthew Norval said the shift was key. “Status is easier to tackle. It gives us hope.” It’s still early days but part of the reason could be the demand elimination campaign the foundation has launched in Vietnam, which is the recipient of 90% of the horn from poached rhinos.

Despite this figure, the demand is limited to a small number of Vietnamese, most of them in the highincome bracket, he said.

“There’s a high degree of embarrassment about rhino poaching.”

Informed by seven fact-finding visits to Vietnam, the foundation has focused one part of its campaign on the Vietnamese youth via a funky project spearheaded by a fierce but loveable character called Rhino Ranger.

Prepped by information on rhinoceros and rhino poaching channelled through multimedia marketing, scholars at 11 targeted schools in the Vietnamese capital of Ho Chi Minh submit essays or drawings about what they have learned.

The top entrants win a trip to South Africa, where they get to go on a wilderness hike and to see wild rhino as well as visit a rhino orphanage for calves left behind by their slaughtered mothers.

These “rhino ambassadors” then return home to spread the word on the need to stop the killing, Norton explained.

The second part of the foundation’s demand elimination campaign was focused on the businessmen who may be part of the user group, Norton said.

The strategy so far had been to communicate via business chamber newsletters and networking, but the foundation was due to present their case directly to the businessmen at a rhino poaching seminar in Vietnam in November.

The Eastern Cape has sustained 79 rhino poaching incidents since South Africa’s rhino war began a decade ago, the provincial environment department’s law enforcement director Div de Villiers said.

Recalling some of the worst incidents through the years, De Villiers said the figure would be much worse if it were not for the collaboration achieved between the various authorities backed by private anti-poaching units, honorary rangers and NGOs.

With the tipping point now passed where rhino offspring numbered more than rhinos lost to poaching, each poaching incident moved the animal closer to extinction, he said.

“It makes you disgusted and angry every time. It’s a horrific crime.”