Rhino Poaching in our own Backyard

A few weeks back I went to a talk at work all about Anti Poaching Efforts that are being done by various groups in South Africa and other places on the continent.   Rhino and elephant poaching are serious problems and they are deploying some good technologies to try to combat it.

One group here at the University of Pretoria runs a forensic lab where they map the DNA of rhino horns (both living and dead) so that they know where all the rhinos are and if horn is found in the marketplace they know where it came from.

Here is a link to a video done on the lab. (this is the lady I saw speak)
http://www.up.ac.za/en/the-onderstepoort-veterinary-genetics-laboratory/news/post_2032325-rhino-dna-mapping

Dr. Harper also gave examples of a few cases where the DNA evidence was used to convict people selling illegal horn.

Sadly, the same day I saw this great talk, three rhinos that live in Reitvlei Nature Reserve were poached.  Two adults, one was a pregnant female that was carrying an almost full term baby.  There are pictures on the local news websites, but they are too disturbing to post here.

For all of our friends and family that have visited, this is the place that is about 15 minutes from our house that we always visit.  So tragic!   Especially because this Nature Reserve cuts the horns off the rhinos to prevent poaching.  In this case, the horns had grown back a bit and the poachers must have believed they had enough horn to make it worth their while.

I hope that the poachers who killed the beautiful rhinos at Reitvlei will be caught!  I also hope that education efforts can be stepped up to get people to stop believing that rhino horn has magical properties!

The next time you read a snippet in a magazine about poaching, know that it is real and not something that just happens in remote places, this Nature Reserve is down the street from a shopping mall!  For a little perspective for my Wakefield friends, it is like someone killing an animal at the Stoneham Zoo!

More upbeat posts to follow, took me awhile to do this one because I was so disturbed by it!