Rhino Horn

"Fevers, Daggers and Extinction?"

For centuries, hunters stalked rhinoceroses for their rhino horn to sell for ancient Chinese medicine remedies and ornament use.

In Asia, poachers still search the jungles to shoot and kill these large endangered mammals in pursuit of body parts that fetch outrageous prices in the wildlife market.

Whether you believe rhino ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine helps to cure fevers or approve of buying daggers with horn carved handles, the reality is death.

Asia has three of the five living rhino species (Black and white rhinoceroses are in Africa.):

• Javan rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) - Found only in western Java in Indonesia, with under ten in Vietnam, for a total of less than 60 total individuals.
• Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) - Found in the jungles of Borneo and Peninsular Malaysia with less than 400 total individuals.
• Greater Asian One-Horned (Indian) Rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) - Found only in India and Nepal with 2,400 individuals remaining.

[Go to rhinoceros facts to find more information about their behavior and conservation concerns.]

Due to poaching, sport killing and habitat loss, all Asian rhino species are threatened with possible extinction in the near future. Once found all over tropical Asia, grazing in grasslands and abundant throughout lowland rainforests, these large mammals may soon disappear altogether.

The endangered rhino, a victim of senseless hunting

Rhino Horn: Conservation and Concerns

Today the real incentive remains the extraction of rhino horn to feed the insatiable demand for more medicinal products that have yet to be fully proven to be effective.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Photo: GNU

Conservation groups, such as TRAFFIC and WWF, work with governments, communities and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners to influence wild animal protection measures, find rhino horn substitutes and alternatives, bolster law enforcement action on poaching and wildlife trading and regulate the TCM industry to ensure illegal products are not used.

Alternatives to using rhino horn for dagger handles, including water buffalo horns and agate, may help to curtail the slaughter of rhinos.

However, the lustre of rhino horn improves with age, a desired quality by dagger buyers.

All of these simulataneous efforts to stabilize current wild rhino populations are necessary because of the paltry number of species left.

But habits formed over centuries are hard to break. And the economic gains are hard to ignore. Each year requires vigilance.

According to IUCN, global poaching for rhino horn is expected to reach a 15-year high in 2009. All the successful efforts of decades of increasing rhino populations can be wiped out by an upsurge in poaching.

In Asia, rhinos have already been poached in India and Nepal.

Traditional Daggers Using Rhino Horn