Bio-engineered rhino horns have few takers across world

A coalition of wildlife non-government organisations from across the world has opposed the use of bio-engineered rhino horn as a measure to curb poaching of the endangered species.

Updated on: Oct 15, 2015, 01:31:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A coalition of wildlife non-government organisations from across the world has opposed the use of bio-engineered rhino horn as a measure to curb poaching of the endangered species.

A white rhino and its baby cross a road in Kenya’s Rift Valley. (Reuters Photo)

An American biotech start-up, Pembient, established in January 2015, has set an aim of replacing the illegal wildlife trade worth $20 billion with sustainable commerce.

“We are leveraging advances in biotechnology to fabricate wildlife products, such as rhino horn and elephant ivory, at prices below the levels that induce poaching. Our goal is to replace the illegal wildlife trade with sustainable commerce,” the company said on its website.

However, the idea has not found takers among wildlife campaigners across the world who believe that it will worsen rhino and elephant poaching by removing the “stigma” of horn consumption and creating obstacles for law enforcement.

“Pembient is trying to capitalise on the blood of rhinos for money and their reckless behaviour is as threatening as the poaching they claim to be addressing,” said a joint statement issued by 10 international NGOs including Wildlife Protection Society of India.

There is a huge demand for rhino horns in parts of China and Vietnam where the powdered horn is considered a cure for everything — from hangover to cancer.

But the source of the horn is in South Africa and India. In South Africa, the toll of the big animal has risen from 13 in 2007 to staggering 1,215 in 2015. India, which has highest population of single horn rhinos in Asia, has seen killing of 141 rhinos between 2009 and 2014 and another 13 in 2015.

Wildlife activists say Pembient’s plans will encourage rhino killing as it will become very difficult for enforcers to distinguish between real and bio-engineered horns.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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