Help Save Endangered Rhinos by Making Artificial Horns (Video)

Black Rhinoceros horn material sells for $65,000 per kilo. The rhinos are rare, which helps up the price, but the horn is also prized "as a fever-reducer, a cosmetic, an aphrodisiac, a hangover care. And so people highly value it in the Vietnamese and Chinese cultures. So we are trying to reduce that value by increasing the supply," says Jennifer Kaehms of Pembient, a company that's working to make artificial rhino horns that are not only chemically indistinguishable from the natural variety, but are 3-D printed to look the same. The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching -- which is a big deal because there are only about 5,000 black rhinos left in the whole world.

They have a crowdfunding appeal on experiment.com looking for help in sequencing the black rhino genome. At this writing, it has two days to run and has only raised $12,831 of its $16,500 goal. The results will be open sourced, and once the black rhino is on its way to salvation, they plan to work on the white rhino, then move on to killing the black market for ivory and tiger pelts, which don't sell for as much as rhino horns but are valuable enough to keep an international horde of poachers in business.

Comments

Sounds like they don't get it at all

[kheldan]

It's not the chemical makeup of rhino horn that makes it valuable to people, it's the 'mystical' properties of it. It's pure superstition.

Re:Sounds like they don't get it at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why they're not selling it as a rhino horn alternative. They appear to be going out of their way to make people believe it IS rhino horn, so all the mystical BS that people attach to it isn't removed from the equation.

Privatize them

[paulpach]

In 1900 there were less than 20 white rhinos left due to poaching for their horns. In 2010 there were 20,000. This success was accomplished by privatizing the white rhinos.

Today, the black rhinos face the exact same threat, and we don't know what to do?!? Is this a racist thing (lol) ?

In case you are wondering why this worked: If I own the last 20 white rhinos, they are worth a fortune. I have a tremendous economic incentive to protect them from poaching and reproduce them. Eventually as their population grows, I might be able to sell some for profit and the new owners would also have the incentive to protect and reproduce theirs. As supply grows, the value of an individual rhino drops and eventually it might be economical to sell them to hunters. If there are too many rhinos the free market would hunt them, and if there are too few the free market would protect them, keeping a stable and sustainable population. This is why any animal we can own (chickens, pigs, cows, horses, dogs, etc...) are not in any danger of extinction.

chemistry vs genetics

[duckintheface]

They want to make rhino horn so they are sequencing the genes? These two ideas have almost nothing to do with each other. If they were raising funds for chemical analysis of horn material or for purchasing 3D printers, it might make sense. They are unlikely to get much helpful information from a genetic analysis that will help with making fake horns. Seems like the person who posted this story was not paying attention.

White Rhino saved by state-run national reserve.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Privatization? WTF are you talking about?

The white Rhino was saved by the establishment of the Hluhluwe–iMfolozi Park. The last 20 Rhinos were not privately owned, but protected by the state.

Had they been privately owned, they would almost certainly now be extinct. The idea that private enterprise would conserve and endangered animal for some far off future benefit when it is generally incapable of seeing past the next quarter is not just stupid, but dangerous.