Related to the elephant ivory trade is the rhino horn trade. Recently there’s been discussion of farming the rhinos in order to harvest their horns in a sustainable way – the horns will grow back. NewScientist (4 November 2017) reports on the objections to this approach:
But others object. “It is a terrible idea,” says David Blanton of Serengeti Watch.
Instead of merely meeting existing demand, the extra supply might boost it – keeping prices high and poachers incentivised.
Legalisation “creates the perception that buying these products is fine”, says Andrea Crosta of the Elephant Action League. China’s growing wealth is creating “hundreds of millions of consumers of rhino horn”.
Worse, the legal trade could be subverted. An investigation by the Elephant Action League revealed Asian dealers moving products via a web of couriers, including the Chinese navy. They could exploit a legal trade, says Crosta. “The legal system will create an opportunity to launder all rhino horns from Africa and Asia.”
I agree. This is entirely the wrong approach to the problem of illegal rhino horn trading – because it doesn’t reinforce the idea that rhino horn is not a medicine, traditional or not. And even if it were, the resource is now at a critically low level.
The second problem of the harvesting of rhino horns – that of it being a trophy – is of a somewhat different nature. As humanity continues to overpopulate this planet and, critically, doesn’t upgrade its primitive morality, more and more species will face this conundrum, and many will fail. It’s a simple mathematical proposition. We saw an iconic incident a few years ago when an idiot local dentist, Walter Palmer, went out trophy hunting and killed a lion. The consistent hunting of lions will inevitably lead to their end, because they simply don’t have our firepower. In a sense, this is an example of taking things to the “nth” degree – it used to be they killed us, so we figured out how to kill them, and, as a group, humanity has never quite figured out that now they’re no threat to us in general, there’s no need to kill them. Instead, we keep at it with better and better weapons (although, in Palmer’s case he shot the lion with a bow and arrow – twice!) and tools, as if it proves something. In point of fact, Nature is no longer the bountiful source of wealth it once was, and wantonly killing wildlife, particularly predators who keep the herbivore populations stable, keeps pushing the human species closer to its own tragedy.
Because Nature is still our undergirding necessity.
