Rare rhino horns go up in flames in India anti-poaching marketing campaign

Nearly 2,500 uncommon rhino horns have been destroyed Wednesday within the first ceremony of its form in northeastern India as a part of an anti-poaching drive to mark World Rhino Day.

The endangered one-horned rhinoceros was once widespread within the area however looking and habitat loss have slashed its numbers to only a few thousand, with most now present in India’s Assam state.

Trade in rhino horn has been banned since 1977 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

But conservationists warn poaching makes an attempt proceed amid demand from China and Vietnam, rhino horn is promoted as a surprise ingredient in conventional drugs.

“A rhino horn has supreme value only when it is intact to the living rhino. These horns have no value,” Assam’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma mentioned throughout the ceremony within the city of Bokakhat.

“With today’s action, Assam wants to send two messages—that we don’t believe that rhino horns have any medicinal value and that we only believe in preserving the living rhinos.”

The city is close to the UNESCO-listed heritage web site Kaziranga National Park, house to greater than 2,000 one-horned rhinos—the world’s greatest inhabitants.

At the ceremony, horns have been rigorously positioned in layers in a number of giant furnaces earlier than being set alight, sending plumes of smoke into the air above fierce orange flames.

The animal components—which comprise keratin, the identical protein as is available in human hair and nails—had been saved in storage by the federal government since 1969.

Some of the horns had been seized from poachers. Others have been faraway from rhinos that had died of natural causes.

All rhino deaths within the state are recorded by native police.

Before the ceremony, officers extracted DNA from every horn and gave every animal half a singular ID quantity to create a gene database for scientific research and conservation efforts.

Assam’s Forest and Environment Minister Parimal Suklabaidya added that 94 horns have been additionally put aside and can be saved for heritage functions.

The International Rhino Foundation mentioned on Monday in its annual report that two of the herbivores have been killed by poachers in Assam in 2020.

But the worldwide physique added that rhino poaching deaths have been declining in recent times amid conservation efforts in India and neighbouring Nepal.

The inhabitants of the one-horned creatures had grown to greater than 3,700 after plunging to simply 100 within the early 1900s, it added.

© 2021 AFP