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ZCTF April Report
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF)
April 30, 2011

Snare removals

Two snare removals were successfully carried out near Hwange recently. The first was a 12 to 14 year old bull elephant with a copper wire snare around his front leg and the second was a 12 year old bull with a steel wire around his right back leg. A big thank you to those responsible for removing the snares and also to the donors of the M99 which made the snare removals possible.

Thoughts on rhino poaching

Last week we reported the dehorning by poachers of a rhino in the Save Conservancy. The most horrifying aspect of this atrocity was that the mutilated rhino did not die in the attack and was left wandering around in agony. Coincidentally, as seen on the South African TV programme, Carte Blanche last Sunday, a very similar incident happened in South Africa recently where the horns were hacked out of a rhino and it was also left alive. The footage was extremely upsetting.

Various methods are employed to try and prevent rhino from falling prey to poachers but the slaughter and maiming of this endangered species continues unabated. Dehorning is quite a popular method but this doesn't seem to deter the poachers. The rhinos endure a certain amount of stress in the dehorning exercise and once their horn has been removed, they no longer have that defence mechanism. In the case of female rhinos, when they give birth to a calf, they need the horn to help the newborn rhino to its feet. The other disadvantage of dehorning is that the horn grows back and the dehorning process has to be repeated on a regular basis throughout the rhino's lifetime.

Instead of spending money on dehorning, we believe that the best and most cost effective way to minimize the poaching and try to prevent the extinction of the species is to administer poison to the horns. This was done by a farmer in South Africa and he says the poison, whilst deadly to humans, has no effect whatsoever on the rhino. This may seem like a drastic measure but the only way to prevent rhino poaching is to discourage people from buying it and it would only need to be done once to each rhino. Signs could be erected where rhinos are kept warning poachers that the horns are poisoned. Warnings could also be issued through media campaigns worldwide and the word would soon get around that consumption of rhino horn could prove fatal.

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