One A Day ( not the vitamin.)

The numbers are in and they aren't pretty; they are actually pretty sad and disturbing. Rhinoceros poaching in South Africa alone (not the only place where this occurs,) reached an all time high in 2010, totaling one rhino per day. That is more than triple the amount of rhinos poached in 2009, and from what experts can tell, it is only expected to get worse as the poachers become more organized and efficient.
Dr. Joseph Okori, an African Rhino Program Manager, says the highly coordinated criminal rings in South Africa have begun using advanced technologies such as night vision equipment, veterinary tranquilizers, helicopters, and silencers. I don't know about you, but to me all of that seems like a very sketchy and expensive ordeal, making me wonder who is forking over the money for the goods. It could be from the money that the poachers get from the Asian pushers who sell the horns (after they have been ground to dust particles and dissolved in boiling water) as medicine to cure such ailments as fever, gout, vomiting, food poisoning, cancer (yes, they really believe that), devil possession (yep, they believe that one too) and even as an aphrodisiac.
Belief in the powers within a rhino horn is not something new, however. This actually goes back thousands of years, all the way to Greek mythology (they thought the horns held the ability to purify water) - wonder if Evian or Fiji has ever thought to incorporate some rhino horn into those little bottles? Truth is, there may be no truth to any of the beliefs that rhino horns are magical. Which makes these poachings all the more pointless and tragic.
Researchers at Chinese University in Hong Kong found that, in a VERY large dose, extract from a rhino horn could lower a fever in a rat but the amount usually given to a human from a Chinese medicine specialist are many many times lower than those used in the experiments. They did find that there may be some sort of truth to a rhino horn being able to detect a poison, given that the horns are comprised mostly of keratin (also in hair, fingernails and animal hooves) which reacts strongly with alkaline, the main component of poison.
South African officials made approximately 162 poaching arrests last year, which is a start, which is better than nothing. Seems to me, though, that if the poachers are stepping it up and bringing their A game, then we owe it to the innocent rhinos to bring ours.