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Comment by matthewmarkus | Hacker News Reader

I'm the CEO of Pembient, one of the companies working on this problem [1]. I would be happy to answer questions on what we're doing. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that a lot of the initial research done on rhino horn usage by conservation NGOs has been debunked by Yufang Gao, Karl Ammann, the Wildlife Justice Commission [2], and others. That is, the use of rhino horn as medicine is not what drives poaching.

[1] https://sosv.com/why-pembient-is-confident-in-synthetic-rhin...

[2] https://wildlifejustice.org/cn/overlooked-rhino-horn-demand-...

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I'm really sorry to hear this side of the problem.

I truly hope that bioengineering the rhino horn will be successful in preventing more damage.

Thank you for your positive thoughts.

Despite this awful incident in France, there has been some good news on the rhino front. In the five years before our announcement in 2015, rhino poaching was growing an average of 49% or so year-over-year, significantly more than the approximately 1% or less year-over-year growth it has experienced since then. Obviously, correlation doesn't imply causation, but whatever brought about the anomaly has bought the rhinos some time. In fact, South Africa, home to the majority of African rhinos, recently announced its second year of absolute declines in rhino poaching [1]. Hopefully, this trend will continue!

[1] http://www.traffic.org/home/2017/2/27/south-africa-annual-rh...

What kind of demand reduction campaigns do you think can work for these carving enthusiasts?

Honestly, my view is that demand reduction [1] is a monoculture that has taken over conservation and produced very little positive results. In fact, it could be argued that demand reduction has even increased wildlife consumption via boomerang effects [2]! I would like to see another school of thought, harm reduction [3], challenge the demand reduction orthodoxy.

TL;DR: I can think of no campaign that can reduce demand; although, I can think of several that might accidently increase it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_reduction

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_effect_(psychology)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_reduction

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