Google – AFP, 16 October 2013
A male
white rhino grazes at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy on November 18,
2010
(AFP/File, Simon Maina)
|
Nairobi —
Kenya will place microchips in the horn of every rhino in the country in a bid
to stamp out a surge in poaching the threatened animals, wildlife officials
said Wednesday.
"Poachers
are getting more sophisticated in their approach," Paul Udoto, spokesman
for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), told AFP.
"So it
is vital that conservation efforts also follow and embrace the use of more
sophisticated technology to counter the killing of wildlife."
Kenya has
just over 1,000 rhino, and the tiny chips will be inserted and hidden in the
horn, which is made of keratin, the same material as fingernails or hardened
hair.
The World
Wildlife Fund donated the chips as well as five scanners at a cost of $15,000
(11,000 euros), although tracking the rhino to dart them and fit the device
will cost considerably more.
However, it
will boost the ability of police to prosecute poachers or traffickers, allowing
for all animals to be traced and providing potential vital information on
poaching and smuggling chains.
"Investigators
will be able to link any poaching case to a recovered or confiscated horn, and
this forms crucial evidence in court, contributing towards the prosecution's
ability to push for sentencing of a suspected rhino criminal," KWS said in
a statement.
Poaching
has risen sharply in Africa in recent years. Rhinos are not the only animals
targeted; whole elephant herds have been massacred for their ivory.
The
lucrative Asian black market for rhino horn has driven a boom in poaching
across Africa.
Asian
consumers falsely believe the horns have powerful healing properties.
In August,
poachers shot dead a white rhino in Nairobi's national park, a brazen raid in
one of the best guarded sites in Kenya.
Simply
chopping the horn off the rhino has limited impact, Udoto explained.
"The
horn grows back... and we've so sadly found that poachers can kill a rhino at
first sight and only then find that its horn has been removed," he said.
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