Western black rhino declared extinct | Hacker News Reader

Western black rhino declared extinct

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22 pointscenhyperion8 comments

One thing I found out recently is that you can de-horn a rhino without harming it (much), and it's reasonably effective against poaching, for obvious reasons. I wonder if we wouldn't have more success conserving the species if we allowed licensed de-horning in exchange for the licensees contributing to the preservation, with both money and/or resources.

http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/issues_for_debate/de-...

According to one game official in southern Africa whom I spoke with directly, the main issue preventing gov't sanctioned dehorning from being a successful is (1) it's dangerous and expensive to track and sedate the animals, and (2) poachers spend time tracking a "hornless" rhino and, upon locating it, kill it anyway.

While [in the poacher's mind] this sends a message to game officials, the poacher is also able to recover about 2 inches of keratin, being that about 2 inches must be left behind in order to "safely" dehorn the animal.

Anti-poachers have also used microchips, anti-robbery dye, and apparently poison.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/05/09/dy...

http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/articles/turni...

Drones as well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...

For once, the comments made at a major news org's site made me <not> shake my head.

Oh yeah, and inb4 "why is this relevant to HN or startups?"

While we are on the subject of poor comments: please do not use pseudo html tags for emphasis (italics works well for that), nor acronyms such as inb4 (if you can't be bothered to type the words, then it's not worth saying/writing).

Also, please avoid sentences like your last which serves no purposes except starting a useless drama.

Declared extinct in to 2011.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_black_rhinoceros

Indeed.

The article is also published in 2011, I'd say this post title merits a (2011). Clearly not a current event, threw me off too.

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