Last rhinos in Mozambique killed by poachers (not RINO)

telegraph.co.uk ^ | 30 Apr 2013 | Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg

[cripplecreek]

Decades of war are always hard on the wildlife. That means to save the wildlife we would have to insert ourselves into their perpetual wars.

[karnage]

Yes, T-Zed lost 10,000 to poachers last year alone. It’s over... sad... grim...

[piasa]

who target rhinoceroses for their horns which are prized in Asia for their reputed aphrodisiac and cancer-curing properties.

What is left undsaid here is that the horns are also very highly prized among some Arabs who use them to make the handgrips for those curved knives elite men stuff into their belts.

[piasa]

Capitalist countries don’t have that many exotic big animals in the wild, do they?

In Africa, none of their famous game species is "exotic" since they are indigenous. To be exotic they have to come from somewhere else. :-)

South Florida's full of exotics. Some would call the wild horse an exotic since they were introduced by the Spanish. But technically, horss originated in North America and spread elsewhere, then died out here, as did the mastodon, sabertooth and wooly mammoth. At one point there were even rhinocerous, giant bison, and four-pronged antelope roaming the American plains.

As for native big animals, there are quite a few:

Canada : moose, wapiti/elk, musk ox, assorted seals, mule deer, white tail deer, wood bison, bison, caribou, mountain goat, dall sheep, grizzly bear, polar bear, black bear, cougar, lynx, gray wolf, coyote, assorted cetaceans such as narwhal, orca...

USA : moose, wapiti/elk, musk ox, assorted seals, sea lions, mule deer, white tail deer, key deer [OK, so they aren't very big], Columbian blacktail deer, wild horse, wild ass, bison, pronghorn antelope, caribou, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, dall sheep, grizzly bear, polar bear, black bear, kodiak bear, cougar, bobcat, gray wolf, red wolf, coyote, American alligator, American crocodile, Florida manatee, wild boar, assorted introduced exotics, cetaceans such as orca, pilot whale, Atlantic dolphin ...

Europe : red deer, roe deer, wood bison, elk [moose], lynx, bear, wild boar, wolf, ...?

And India is loaded with critters and people.

[piasa]

Flood the market with synthetic horn grown in a petri dish from rhino stem cells. :-)

[piasa]

Flood the market with synthetic horn grown in a petri dish from rhino stem cells. :-)

[If a petri dish doesn’t provide suitable room for growth we could always embed the stem cells on the forehead of Lindsey Graham.]

[piasa]

Tragedy of the commons. If no one owns it it won't get taken care of, and no one will care if it successfully reproduces. If a species is owned, then there is an incentive to protect and breed it so long as its offspring are also your property to do with as you please. There's an incentive to hire good staff to protect and keep the stock. That's why horses, chickens, cows, pigs, dogs, cats, turkeys, geese, water buffalo, and so on are abundant. And game farms work similarly well - note the native prairie chicken is rare while the exotic pheasant is not... you can own and raise pheasant legally.

Maybe they should sell rhino credits instead of trying to push those bogus carbon credits.