The Black Rhino Cows’ Horns Stand Between the Species’ Survival and its Extinction
I HAVE JUST READ A NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS about the safety of cutting off a black rhino’s horns for the purpose of protecting the species from poachers. The authors claim that there were no …
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I HAVE JUST READ A NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS about the safety of cutting off a black rhino’s horns for the purpose of protecting the species from poachers. The authors claim that there were no deleterious effects and that wild populations of black rhinos were unaffected by the dehorning process.
The way in which this argument was presented, however, completely omits some very important factors to do with black rhino behaviour and the relationship that exists between black rhinos and their principle predator, the spotted hyena.
Let me fill you in, from my personal experiences in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where I spent every dry season of the period (1964 – 1970) tracking black rhinos on foot, on a daily basis, from dawn to dusk, for those seven long years, darting the animals that we could and translocating 140 captured specimens to game reserves where they should have been relatively save.
