Sunday, January 30, 2011

South African Poaching Deaths Rise

When I think about poaching the first thing that comes to my mind is Africa.Most stories you hear about poaching are in Africa. Africa has many animals that are frequently poached such as, lions, elephants, and rhinos. Today I'm specifically focused on the poaching of Rhinos.


  • The British newspaper, the Guardian, reports that the pace of killings of South African rhinos is outpacing last year's, with 136 rhinos killed for their horns which are used in medicine in Asia and for dagger handles in the Middle East. That compares with 129 rhinos killed last year.
This exerpt shows one reason why rhinos are poached. That reason is for their horns. The horns are ivory which is a very prized substance.In this article knife handles is one of ivorys uses.
This exerpt also shows how numbers on rhino poaching are rising. I thought that in modern times there would be no reason to poach and that with all the environmental programs that poaching would subside.This just proves how wrong i was since not only is poaching still around but it is on the rise.

The South African Rhinos are a small population already and this added threat of poaching isn't helping them to survive.Another issue is that the places where they are supposted to be safe, such as game reserves, are the places where they are being poached.

If you would like to know more about the plight of the rhino you can read the rest of the article at http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/07/19/128628852/s-african-rhino-poaching-deaths-rise

4 comments:

  1. That's so sad that rhinos are being hunted to extinction just for their horns, which we can now easily substite with other materials. I heard an article last week about how poachers are now wealthier than the people protecting the animals, so they can now get helicopters and night vision goggles, which the protective services can't afford.

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  2. Do you think that the poachers need to hunt these rhinos or that they do it just as a hobby? I think that I heard they are close to extinction. How can we help?

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  3. I think that the poachers hunt these animals for the added money from selling them on the black market.I think that if they were in better economic situations then the deaths due to poaching would dramatically decrease.

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  4. With an 80,000 dollar per horn bounty and China doing nothing to discourage the import, if something doesn't change it will be over for rhinos very soon. We need as many voices as we can get on this issue. http://rhinowrangler.wordpress.com/

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