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It may have been a consumer rumour as much as a poacher's gun that finished off the last rhino in Vietnam. An investigation into the extermination of the animal has led back to a dubious claim – one that has gone viral in Vietnam in recent years – that powdered rhino horn cures cancer.
The rumour, which has no basis in science or traditional Chinese medicine, is believed responsible for a surge in demand that is blamed for the loss of three rhino populations in the past year, a wildlife NGO claimed this week. It has prompted conservation groups to begin an urgent review of strategies to identify and affect trends in consumer behaviour.
The Javan rhino was declared extinct in Vietnam last month after the last one was found dead with a bullet in its leg and its horn sawn off. This month, it was followed by Africa's western black rhinoceros and by warnings that the Sumatran rhino is on the brink of extinction in Indonesia.
This followed years of relative stability. The illegal rhino market went quiet in the late 90s as the two main sources of demand – dagger handles in Yemen and fever suppressants in China – were choked with a mix of government crackdowns and viable alternatives. As recently as 2007, only 13 rhinos were poached in South Africa. This year, the number is already 341.
"We couldn't understand what was happening at first," said Steven Broad of Traffic, a wildlife conservation group. "Then we noticed unusual demand from Vietnam. This had not previously been a major market so at first we assumed this was a staging point for China. But now we believe, Vietnam is the final destination."
The cause appears to be a rumour, started in Vietnam five or six years ago, that rhino horn had cured cancer in a former politician. The politician was not named, nor were there any details on the cancer supposedly cured. But the rumour spread rapidly and the price of rhino horn surged, recently hitting a record high of more than $60,000 a kilogramme – a higher price than gold. This prompted poachers to dust off their rifles and take greater risks. Rangers have shot dead 16 poachers since last year. Others are using helicopters for hunts.
Killings have also increased in Kenya and Tanzania. In Britain, thieves have broken into a museum to steal rhino horn. Legal trophy hunts have suddenly been flooded with applicants from Vietnam, some of whom had clearly never handled a gun before.
Some speculate that it may come from China. Others that the rumour was deliberately started by collectors and dealers of rhino horn, whose stocks have now surged in value. Other factors may also be at play, as many rhino horn collectors in China also invest in ivory products, expecting them to rise in value as the animals become scarcer.
Many questions remain. But for now, conservationists say the case shows the need to rethink their approach. Until now this has focused on protecting animals in the wild, but there is increasing recognition that more work is needed to identify and change consumer behaviour.
"The loss of our last rhino is a sad story," said Nguyen Van Ahn, a former activist now working for Vietnam's ministry of natural resources. "We have to do more to ensure the same doesn't happen to other endangered animals. I think we have to pay more attention on the demand side. We didn't do that enough before."
The stakes are high and not just for rhino. In Vietnam alone, the Indochinese tiger, Asian elephant, saola, Tonkin snub-nosed monkey and Siamese crocodile are all on the brink of vanishing. Elsewhere in Asia, many other animals are at risk from the surge in demand.
This global trend has been accelerated by the spread of internet commerce, international travel and the rapid development of China and other Asian economies, where affluent modern lifestyles and traditional habits of wild animal consumption are proving a particularly lethal mix for pangolins, tigers, sharks, elephants and a host of other species.
The sense of crisis has been evident in three separate workshops on demand reduction organised in Asia in the past two weeksThis week in Hong Kong, WWF, Traffic, the Environment Investigation Agency, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the World Bank joined marketing experts, media strategists and government officials in an attempt to draw up new approaches to reducing demand for tiger and rhino products in China and Vietnam.
This followed an "emergency brainstorming session" to arrest the depletion of Asia's wildlife, organised in Bangkok the previous week by the ASEAN wildlife enforcement network, the US international development agency and Freeland. Wildaid also called a gathering of interested parties on a similar subject in Beijing.
"Escalating demand in Asia and the poaching crisis in Africa and Asia perhaps are wake-up calls for many conservation groups," said Grace Ge Gabriel, the Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "The fact is that putting a price tag on an endangered species is the fastest way to push it towards extinction. To reduce commercial exploitation of wildlife, we need to address every link on the trade chain, from anti-poaching to stopping smuggling to reducing market demand."
Conservationists have been trying for years to discourage purchases of ivory, whale meat, uncertified wood products and other items that up the pressure on endangered species.
While this is less glamorous, more difficult and harder to measure than the establishment of nature reserves and the fight against poachers, it is increasingly important as wild supplies decline and wealthy consumers increase. In future, more effort is likely to go into the work of surveying consumers, monitoring shopkeepers and launching marketing campaigns to shift habits, traditions and cultural norms.
The challenge and possibility were both evident around the venue for the Hong Kong meeting, which was located in the heart of the territory's massive shark fin market. It is estimated that between 25 million and 75 million sharks are killed each year to supply this billion-dollar business, which has devastated several species.
Government action to tackle this unsustainable harvest has been slow or non-existent so conservation groups have set their sights on consumers. This year, the WildAid international ambassador and basketball star Yao Ming spoke out against shark fin soup. Earlier this week, the Peninsula hotel – one of the most prestigious in Hong Kong – said it would stop serving the dish from January. It was a rare victory that campaigners hope to build on.
"Conservation groups need to help the hospitality industry develop a sustainable seafood market," said Stanley Shea of Bloom Association, a Hong Kong-based NGO that is pressing other hotels to follow suit. The demand-side strategy, he said, can help more conventional measures to protect the wild. "Now is the time for conservation groups to rethink their approach."
• This article was amended on 29 November 2011. The original said Actionaid recruited basketball star Yao Ming this year to speak out against shark fin soup. This has been corrected.
Comments
25 November 2011 1:15PM
I would really like to know why China hasn't already stepped up with cheaper fake products. That's the normal way of things, and then the cheaper fakes flood the market, pushing the original out. That would actually be a good thing in this case.
25 November 2011 1:18PM
This is probably the only argument in favour of homoeopathy: if people don't believe in this woo, but in the magical healing powers of pills containing nothing but sugar, no species get wiped out.
There should be more tests on Asian 'traditional' medicines and people found selling stuff made from endangered species punished.
25 November 2011 1:20PM
Sad really. I know animals go extinct all the time and have done for millions of years but it's the sort of news which makes you want to pick up an assault rifle and go hunt some poachers (said from the comfort of my office).
25 November 2011 1:22PM
I imagine that my lack of hunting skills, inability to walk long distances without getting a bit chesty and non-existent links to gun runners would probably get in the way though
25 November 2011 1:34PM
Its the thought that counts! I'll join you with my Ventolin.
I have travelled around Vietnam and Cambodia, the locals will kill and eat anything that moves but to see magnificent beasts killed due to wacky ideas about medicine and superstition makes the blood boil.
25 November 2011 1:38PM
All they had to do was fit the rhino's with fake horns made from an alloy.
That way they would still be alive...........
25 November 2011 1:57PM
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25 November 2011 2:01PM
It's too bad that allegations of racism and cultural imperialism have hampered the efforts to save wildlife in developing countries.
While it's true that those of us in the relatively cushy West are often less than sympathetic to the financial needs of (for example) workers on Ugandan oil fields or Indonesian palm oil plantations, there's plenty to be said against "traditional" Asian medicines made from animals: they're ineffective at best and dangerous at worst, and the market can hardly be said to be "traditionally Asian" when it's adding new species to its list of must-kills all the time - one of the most recent is the manta ray:
www.dive-the-world.com/creatures-manta-rays.php
There are plenty of "traditional" practices that have been consigned to history because they're bad for us and the planet, so why not this senseless slaughtering of beasts in the service of quackery?
25 November 2011 2:09PM
Tragic how stupid most of the human race is.
But if any Chinese are reading - powdered Katie Price makes you grow 3 inches!
25 November 2011 2:12PM
While this is awful, let's not get too smug about this. In our own culture, many people buy shark cartilage (just as full of woo as rhino horn) thinking it will prevent cancer. And many shark species are in serious trouble too. To ignore this while condemning the Vietnamese smacks of hypocrisy and racism.
25 November 2011 2:34PM
Neanderthals all of them. Chinese potions, Chinese cuisines, Vietnamese cancer cures, witch doctor black magic.
This great beast has been lost by rampant greed and complete ignorance, foolishness and callousness by Asian countries. I've had enough of all these accusations of Western Greed, it's shared just as ruthlessly by Asia which has its own brand of viciousness.
China doesn't care for the World and its future generations, the great animals of which we will never see the like of again. I used to defend China and other Asian countries for having their own unique cultural values and idiosyncracies, but its destructiveness knows no bounds. I'm boycotting everything that is made in any Asian country. I will never buy another thing that says made in China on it, whether its clothes, food, toys or other products. Stuff the lot of them.
25 November 2011 2:43PM
As a species we have bigger problems than this.
25 November 2011 2:54PM
That's your opinion, so leave us to make our own opinion. Enviornmentalism is the most important thing for me overriding all other concerns. I care deeply for conservation and climate change and the way our country is being turned into a lump of concrete that has brick walls instead of hedgerows and that now has artificial lawns because people are too bone idle to tend to their gardens and consider their impact on native wildlife.
25 November 2011 2:57PM
Stupid isn't a colour.
25 November 2011 3:00PM
Totally agree with you and I too won't buy all sorts of things as a personal statement, hoping others are doing the same. Unfortunately you'll be hard pushed to avoid 'China' for many clothing products, toys etc. (Worse for Australians where all their casual clothing seems to come from China)
25 November 2011 3:27PM
Sorry Sting.
25 November 2011 3:30PM
Tragic news - but if I had cancer and ...
As others have said, we must also be aware of failings in our own culture. for example, that driving a 4L SUV that does 10 mpg makes you more attractive to women whilst destroying the entire planet (thank you Clarkson) - yet another of the many untruths so many westerners believe that does untold damage.
25 November 2011 4:10PM
Typical stupid, superstition > a tragic example of when humans go mental!
What an awful shame.. :(
25 November 2011 4:21PM
Is this not just a more extreme version of the 'we must preserve the rainforests just in case they will provide a cure for cancer in the future' meme that I've hear repeated ad nauseum? Equally bad is the 'we must preserve wildlife for the benefit of out children'. It all just helps feed a view of all the other species on our planet as a resource or commodity rather than having the right to exist for their own sake.
25 November 2011 4:49PM
Turn Bovine Hooves into imitation Rhino hornes
Sell for massive profit
25 November 2011 5:02PM
Cnynddeiriog, you are right. However, such an attitude will not help us prevent the human condition of hunting species to extinction directly or indirectly through habitat loss. We really do have no choice but to make arguments, in many countries, that there are unknown benefits about these creatures and to make emotional pleas to governments and to people to protect all wildlife.
Indeed, what wildlife is allowed to live for its own sake in this world? That story in the Guardian the other day on the Orangutans was a shuddering case in point http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/23/indonesian-plantation-workers-orangutan-deaths. Unless we can persuade and enlighten people that these creatures deserve the respect and protection of all humans, they will be destroyed. That doesn't diminish what you say, I agree with you, but we must make these arguments hoping that one day these people will become more enlightened and appreciative of their own countries unique ecology and its importance. Then these wildlife can be allowed to exist for their own sake truly.
I know I have offended some people by stating that my view or the environmentalist view is more enlightened than these ravaging capitalists and witchdoctor homeopaths hacking off horns for magic potions. But I maintain that it is. When you have spent time with the animals you disregard or seek to destroy, you recognise the value they have to their ecosystems and their own individual beauty. That is true for snakes and snails as it is for lions and tigers and bears (oh my). I am not for a moment suggesting that wildlife in the Western world enjoys this status of existing for their own sake, this is something we must really work on too and aspire to achieve.
25 November 2011 6:14PM
Marketing people can sell anything. Let us get them workig on spreading the fact that the consumption or other use of rhino horn leads directly to AIDs. Or even some other nasty disease. In fact even looking at rhino horn can do this. Or even just ordering it over the internet. Let's put the fear of god in action here. Should work a trick or two.
25 November 2011 8:56PM
There is the simple statement that no human being is worth the death of all the rhinoceroses.
I don't care how important you may think you are - you are never going to be worth as much as the continued existence of a species. If you actually believe that your existence is more valuable than that of an entire species - then you have proved your lack of worth. You should be now eligible to be hunted down as an example of a worthless piece of meat and displayed as such. I'd happily pay for such a trophy - far more than I'd pay for the death of a creature that has done nothing to offend, other than upsetting the status seeking position of a piece of a pathetic scrap of shameful flesh, that is so sad that it needs to be reassured of itself by the death of a creature. If one is so ashamed of the potency of ones genitals, then spend the money on surgery, rather than the killing of another being.
Pathetic is what you are - there is no need to prove this.
25 November 2011 9:13PM
The Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine is deeply saddened by the serious threat to rhinoceros populations in Asia and in Africa and shocked by the recent reports of the extinction of the Javan rhino in Vietnam and Africa's western black rhino.
The RCHM strongly condemns the illegal trade in endangered species and has a strict policy prohibiting the use of any type of endangered species by any of our members.
We do not consider rhino horn to be a medicinal ingredient, and herbal substitutes are readily available. In the UK, no animal or mineral products should be used in Chinese medicine. It is illegal to use animal or mineral products in unlicensed medicine and most herbal medicines come into this category. We are in contact with a range of wildlife organisations raise awareness of this issue.
The RCHM understands that rhino horn was removed from the Chinese medicine pharmacopeia in 1993; the pharmacopeia is administered by the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China
25 November 2011 10:46PM
I'd quite happily execute in public and for as long as it takes all the idiots demanding this crackpot cure.
26 November 2011 1:42AM
too late for the whole lot methinks, UN reckons there's be an extra 2 bn of us in 30 years or so, bye bye forests bye bye oceans bye bye bye and as for the medicine, it's just the extention of this human perception that he can outsmart the nature, so the natural selection has gone (silicone) tits up, they keep multiplying, they all think they have a 'right' to be there, good for nothing, and keep ripping off the planet. all this progress just brings the doom closer.
26 November 2011 8:01AM
Very sad.
It would be interesting to see what would happen to one of Britain's endangered species should it be discovered that they were, say, made out of gold.
I rather think they would also be hastened on their way to extinction pretty damn quick.
Perhaps we could be a bit more understanding of the poachers. They are not rich enough to take on the message of environmentalism. Wealth and education is the only way to stop such problems.
26 November 2011 8:44PM
What is so tragic is that hemp oil extract really works. In warm climates it grows just like the weed it is, and extracting the active components is as simple as cooking breakfast.
There is absolutely no need whatsoever for any rare plant or animal to be killed to be used as a cure for cancer ever again.
Google search using this search term "Rick Simpson" + "Dennis Hill" + "Ava Marie"
( include the quotes ) for the full story.
27 November 2011 11:13AM
“Is this not just a more extreme version of the 'we must preserve the rainforests just in case they will provide a cure for cancer in the future' meme that I've hear repeated ad nauseum? Equally bad is the 'we must preserve wildlife for the benefit of out children'. It all just helps feed a view of all the other species on our planet as a resource or commodity rather than having the right to exist for their own sake.”
Absolutely. Non human sentient beings are generally regarded as having no intrinsic right to exist other than as commodities to be utilised by our allegedly superior species. Conservationists also perpetuate indifference by supporting this anthropocentric view, and organisations like the WWF do immense harm to the interests of all wildlife by endorsing the mass slaughter of any species provided it is not on the edge of extinction.
Those who wish to help wildlife should under no circumstances contribute to such organisations, but should give to rescue centres instead - they are the people who genuinely care.
27 November 2011 12:15PM
This month two Rhino families (one in Asia, one in Africa) have been declared extinct. Chances are my kids will learn about them like the Dodo.
Hit the blighters where it hurts -in their pockets, then maybe they will be moved to action.
No more korean or vietnamese products or holidays for me.
Bye-bye samsung and kia/dihatsu.
Now (Mostly Japanese ) Sony and Toyota.