People who use rhinoceros to heal are at risk of dying or getting sicker, after the owner of a protected area in South Africa decided to inject poison into the horns of these animals, to prevent poaching.
Sky News said this is the idea of Ed Hern, who has a lion and rhino reserve near the South African capital, Johannesburg.
Hern thinks that turning rhino horn into human poison is the only way to prevent rhino horn trading on the black market."Injecting poison into the horns will cause death or serious illness for rhino horn consumers, " Hern said .
'If someone in China uses rhino horn and is seriously ill, they will never buy it again,' Hern said.
Many Asians have a misconception that rhino horn powder has a positive positive effect. Therefore, the demand for rhino horn from this area is one of the causes of illegal rhino hunting in public and private wildlife sanctuaries in South Africa.
Rhinos in the reserve, including rare black rhino, are being cut with numbers of 2-3 individuals per week to get horns. Each of these horns can be sold for up to 45,000 pounds (about 1.36 billion VND) on the black market.
The gangs of hunters are very advanced. They use helicopters and night detection devices to identify prey. Some conservationists are stunned at the plan to poison the white rhino's horn in Herno's sanctuary, but he said the poison will not harm rhinos.
'We are experimenting by injecting a small amount of poison every day into the rhino horn and will carefully monitor whether there is any reaction. It may seem inhumane, but the image of a white rhino being cut off from a new horn is really a scary image , 'he said.
The most recent adult rhino was killed in the area near the Krugersdorp reserve on June 16. People find their children in hunger and panic. The 9-month-old baby rhino, named Vuma, is being raised in Hern's sanctuary, along with two other young children who also lost their mothers because of illegal hunters.
The young rhinos escaped death because their horns were too small, so the hunters did not care. After Kruger Park increased security after many rhino poachers, criminal gangs increasingly turned their attention to small-scale wildlife sanctuaries.
From the beginning of the year until now 152 animals have been illegally killed. This number is many times larger than in previous years. Scientific studies have demonstrated that keratin (keratin) in rhino horns has no therapeutic value. Human hair and nails are also made of keratin.