South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize winner adds his voice to the crisis.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu has called for an end to the mass butchering of South Africa’s iconic rhinos. Over 600 rhinos have been slaughtered during the last five years, due to demand for illegal rhino horn for traditional medicines in China and Vietnam.
In a statement released on Thursday, the Archbishop Emeritus strongly condemned the scourge.
The butchering of rhinoceroses in South Africa must be stopped. It is robbing our people of their precious natural heritage, robbing our nation of its ecological diversity, and severely embarrassing our nation abroad.
For as long as many of our people remain locked in poverty it is easy to overlook such issues as the killing of our wildlife heritage. But I would like to appeal to South Africans not to take the easy route on this issue. Let us stop the callous brutality, the greed and the criminality that is robbing our children of their birthright.
Chinese and Vietnamese syndicates have unfortunately found willing accomplices inside the South African wildlife community to do the dirty work of supplying illegal rhino horn for ‘traditional medicines’.
The myth of ‘traditional medicines’
Despite the fact that rhino horn has been proven to have no medicinal properties, it still commands top dollar in China and Vietnam, where it is used illegally in traditional medicines.
Most rhino horn leaving southern Africa is destined for consumer markets China and Vietnam, according to research conducted by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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