Apr. 4, 2012 2:21 AM ET

Vietnam craves rhino horn; costs more than cocaine

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Nguyen Huong Giang loves to party but loathes hangovers, so she ends her whiskey benders by tossing back shots of rhino horn ground with water on a special ceramic plate.

Her father gave her the 4-inch (10-centimeter) brown horn as a gift, claiming it cures everything from headaches to cancer. Vietnam has become so obsessed with the fingernail-like substance it now sells for more than cocaine.

"I don't know how much it costs," said Giang, 24, after showing off the horn in her high-rise apartment overlooking the capital, Hanoi. "I only know it's expensive."

Experts say Vietnam's surging demand is threatening to wipe out the world's remaining rhinoceros populations, which recovered from the brink of extinction after the 1970s thanks to conservation campaigns. Illegal killings in Africa hit the highest recorded level in 2011 and are expected to worsen this year.

This week South Africa called for renewed cooperation with Vietnam after a "shocking number" of rhinos have already been reported dead this year.

China has long valued rhino horn for its purported — though unproven — medicinal properties, but U.S. officials and international wildlife experts now say Vietnam's recent intense craving, blamed partly on a widespread rumor that rhino horn cures cancer, is putting unprecedented pressure on the world's estimated 28,000 remaining animals, mainly in South Africa.

"It's a very dire situation," U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said by telephone. "We have very little cushion for these populations in the wild."

Although data on the global rhino horn trade is scarce, poaching in Africa has soared in the past two years, with American officials saying China and Vietnam are driving the trade that has no "significant" end market in the United States.

Wildlife advocates say that over the last decade, rhino horn has become a must-have luxury item for some Vietnamese nouveau riche, alongside Gucci bags and expensive Maybach cars.

Between 2006 and 2008, three diplomats at the Vietnamese Embassy in Pretoria were linked to embarrassing rhino trafficking scandals ...

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_2...e-than-cocaine

http://hosted2.ap.org/CAANR/7394abce...6b44479598ff2c

In Vietnam, Rhino Horn Is A Must-Have Luxury Item

Rhino horn, taken for medicinal purposes in Asian countries including Vietnam and China, can cost up to $55,000 per kilogram, making it more expensive than cocaine and as valuable as gold, the AP reports.

In fact, "wildlife advocates say that over the last decade, rhino horn has become a must-have luxury item for some Vietnamese nouveau riche, alongside Gucci bags and expensive Maybach cars," according to the AP.

But the horn, which is crushed into a powder, is actually made up of keratin, the same substance you'll find in human fingernails.

Though China and Vietnam are both driving the rhino horn trade, the AP reports that Vietnam is driving the increase in poaching, which could lead to the extinction of the world's rhino populations.

Poachers—many of whom are located in South Africa—are so desperate for the horns that some have resorted to stealing them from museums. A zoo manager in Hanoi told the AP that he worries about the safety of the white rhinos exhibited there.

In 2010, the last Javan rhino was killed in Vietnam, found dead in a park with nothing but its horn missing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/in-vi...#ixzz1rSHVOIYR


Giới chức Nam Phi cho biết nước này đã từ chối tất cả hồ sơ xin cấp phép săn tê giác của Việt Nam năm nay, sau khi 159 con tê giác bị giết bất hợp pháp tại Nam Phi tính từ đầu năm 2012.

Bộ Môi trường Nam Phi cho biết sẽ không chấp nhận đơn xin nào của Việt Nam cho đến khi đã có đủ giải pháp nhằm bảo đảm sừng tê không bị mua bán.

South Africa Bars Vietnam Hunters as Rhino Poaching Surges

All 23 rhino hunting applications by Vietnamese residents this year were rejected, South Africa’s Minister of Environmental and Water Affairs, Edna Molewa, said in an interview yesterday.

Hunters from the southeast Asian nation didn’t convince South Africa’s government that they would adhere to permit regulations, which stipulate that trophies can’t be sold, she said. ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...surges-1-.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46948368.../#.T33I_3knnug


A Way To Save The Rhino, Just Not Its Horn

'It Makes You Angry'

Gwin tells Weekend Edition host Scott Simon that he was drawn to the story by the image of a female rhino with her horn cut off. She had survived after poachers tranquilized her, took her horn and left her to die.

In another poaching incident, hunters targeted a male and a female rhino standing next to each other.

"They used silencers so ... they don't even hear the mate go down," Gwin says. "And that, it makes you angry — just like I hope when people see that first picture in the magazine it makes a lot of people [have] a visceral reaction to that."

He says being a rhino is incredibly dangerous right now. There were 448 rhinos confirmed poached in 2011, and it was a third-straight record-breaking year for poaching in South Africa.

The rising price for rhino horns in Asia is driving the hunt, Gwin says, since the horns have long been viewed as a cure-all for many ailments in traditional medicine there.

"What seems to be driving this in Vietnam is around 2007 there was a rumor that a high-ranking Vietnamese official cured his cancer using rhino horn," Gwin says, "and the very next year, poaching went [through] the roof in South Africa, and it's continued ever since."

However, the science on the horns' medicinal benefits is "really, really thin," he says.

http://www.vpr.net/npr/148314276/


Vietnam's Rhino Horn Is Expensive, Over-Hunted, And In High Demand

By MIKE IVES 04/ 4/12 10:30 AM ET AP

"Many Vietnamese believe that anything expensive is good, but if you're going to spend a lot of money on rhino horn, you might as well bite your nails," he said. Rhino horns are composed of keratin, a protein found in human hair and fingernails.

Nguyên bài trong :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1402534.html