A South African rhinoceros, once dead, can travel thousands of miles. Under some circumstances, its horn can trek to places as far away as Vietnam and China. Once there, it transforms into a product for spiritual medicine or a sign of wealth and class. Meanwhile, the rest of its body stays rotting in the grass, and its species inches closer to extinction.
In 2014, poachers killed a record number of the beasts for their horns, according to official numbers published by the South African government’s Department of Environmental Affairs. The number of rhinoceroses that were killed is triple that of four years ago, and the value of their horns by weight is now greater than that of gold. The complex spiritual roots of this illegal market make it difficult to pinpoint the source or perpetuating causes of it; thus, effective solutions increasingly require strong regulations and governmental commitment.
Loopholes in Wildlife Laws
The 1993 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) represented the first official international legal action taken against poaching and the illegal animal trade. The treaty, which attempts to protect wildlife from threats to its survival, emphasizes that illegal trade must be tackled at an international level, because it crosses national borders. Local and federal laws are not enough if there are disparities from country to country.
Grace Gabriel, the Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), tells the HPR, “Since the convention has come into being, no species that has been listed on the treaty has become extinct.” Yet Gabriel points out that some unintentional flaws and loopholes persist. “South Africa allows foreigners to get hunting permits to export rhino horns out of South Africa. These have been exploited by criminal gangs … to smuggle rhino horn out of the country.” By permitting these loopholes, several of the treaty’s articles actually hinder progress towards solving the poaching issue.
Additionally, CITES has approved certain wildlife trades over others, leading to legal instability and inconsistency. Gabriel gives ivory trade as an example. “In the market … you have legal ivory trade and you have illegal ivory trade. The legal market provides cover for illegal trade and creates a gray market. And that gray market is actually more lethal than illegal markets because gray markets will confuse the consumers.” As with the loopholes in the hunting regulations, these exceptions confuse the situation and leave room for criminal action, since the public cannot distinguish between identical legal and illegal items.
The Sino-Vietnamese Market
For the last 3,000 years, rhino horn has played an integral role in traditional Chinese medicine, and specific practices in this tradition have influenced countries outside of China, like Vietnam. Until recently, the horn was primarily used as fine powder and valued for properties claimed to reduce fever and mitigate the effects of cancer. In an interview with the HPR, Colorado State University professor George Wittemyer credits the beliefs associated with rhino horn for prolonging the illegal trade.
However, rhino horn has lost much of its perceived medicinal value in the recent years. Gabriel mentions that after China joined CITES in 1993, its government banned the use of rhino horn in traditional medicine. “Currently, if you’re talking about China, their demand for rhino horn is not driven by health—it’s completely driven by wealth.”
Yet a few individuals remain that adhere to the belief that rhino horn can substantively improve health. Changing attitudes is extremely difficult, says Wittemyer, “especially when you’re dealing with the desperation around [disease]. For example, cancer patients try normal treatments, but because they’re terminal there’s really no hope for them. Everyone at that point is going to be prone to trying what they can, hoping that maybe it’ll have an impact.” Even though a handful of people still hold these beliefs, most individuals have shifted away from considering rhino horn as medicine. Now, many Asian collectors use rhino horns as a symbol for wealth and economic success.
In a Time article, Hannah Beech writes that Vietnam has experienced a similar shift in demand as the country’s recent economic reforms have enriched both the upper class and the more recently affluent middle class. As wealth overcomes health as the demand driver, Gabriel explains, rhino horns are increasingly made into extravagant carvings for purchase. The era of medicinal use is nearly over.
The rhino horn’s status as a wealth symbol is reinforced when national leaders and diplomats take part in the illegal trade. A recently exposed video documents a member of the Vietnamese embassy in Pretoria, South Africa accepting a delivery of rhino horns. As The Guardian reports, the Vietnamese government rarely enforces bans against such crimes, and diplomats like the one caught on film invoke diplomatic immunity to avoid consequences. This state of affairs represents an additional difficulty, as those entrusted with the power to stop the trade are complicit in its continued prevalence. As Wittemyer notes, “[The rhino horn] might be one of these things that takes a whole generation before there’s rejection of that product.”
Illegal markets in China and Vietnam are only part of the reason why poaching is so difficult to stop. Another problem is that poaching is often not just limited to small-scale hunters. Rather, as Beech’s article remarks, international criminal organizations frequently run the operations, thereby linking rhino poaching to a wide variety of other criminal activities.
Gabriel spoke with a current wildlife trader and asked him if he would take the opportunity to shift to weapons trafficking instead of wildlife trafficking. He responded, “No, because those types of trafficking are too dangerous. Risk is too high.” For some criminals, the illegal wildlife trade seems harmless in comparison. Gabriel says, “Wildlife crime has become a high-profit, low-risk endeavor.” It attracts criminal gangs who were previously engaged in other types of more dangerous and less lucrative crimes, and although the crime itself may be less intensive, the criminals involved have a great wealth of experience and can better maneuver around the laws that are currently in place.
Solving the Policy Problem
Rhino poaching and the ivory trade are both international and local issues. They will not be stopped unless countries at every stage of the trade take legal action and stand for the same values. And as an article Gabriel wrote for National Geographic explains, legal bans may be the most effective way to eliminate the rhino horn trade. She writes that after a tip-off from IFAW in 2011, “Chinese wildlife enforcement authorities halted the sale of more than 400 bottles of tiger bone wine and of rhino horn carvings at a high-profile auction in a hotel in Beijing.” The ban that followed had an immediate impact: over the next year, firms canceled auctions of endangered species’ products throughout the country, and the total number of such auctions decreased by 30 to 40 percent—a value of about $322 million.
Certainly, the Chinese government may be one of a handful of countries that hold enough power to make an immediate impact on the market’s supply and demand through these types of bans and laws. Yet this strategy embodies a greater plan to use effective lawmaking to help solve the poaching crisis elsewhere in the world for animals like the South African rhinoceros.
Viral videos, protests, and local movements will not be enough to halt crimes associated with illegal animal trade. Instead, well-worded and properly executed laws have proven much more effective. Local activist groups would do well to focus their efforts on promoting these policy changes and looking for guidance from the people in power with the ability to draft legislation. These grotesque killings and trades will not stop unless governments take action, or species like the South African rhinoceros will die out entirely.
Image credit: William Warby/Flickr
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