There is a start-up that tries to eliminate "the $750 million illegal rhino horn poaching trade by growing rhino horns made from rhino DNA and 3D printed keratin".
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Pembient).
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Pembient).
There are entire farms where crocodiles are bred just for their skin. People like crocodile skin, they make shoes and crap from them. Some people think rhino horn makes their dicks work. Ok fair enough, lets make a shitload of horns.
Checks out. This guy is from South Africa.
I've thought about this with respect to the Oryx, which has been extinct in the wild since the ~1920s, but found a niche on game farms in Texas and Argentina. Now, hunting the Oryx is illegal in the United States and I've wondered how long until the animal goes extinct. At $4000 to $7000 to hunt, it was a lucrative trade.
I would guess that the issue with rhino/elephant would be resource management of a herd that does not hit breeding age for quite a few years. Of course, at these prices, that could work out.
Personally, I think the Asian horn powder market is barbaric.
We won't see the extinction of the chicken, cow or pig as long as there is an incentive to keep them alive.
Rhino farming would make it more profitable and thus more likely to protect them and keep them breeding.
While red junglefowl and wild boar are doing OK, the aurochs is extinct. If you just incentivize rhino horns, you don't incentivize preserving the species or genetic diversity.
While many animals are far harder to raise than cows, the difficulty results in lower numbers and thus increased rarity which thus increases the price of the animal once brought to maturity. Any animal that is risking extinction from being hunted should be sufficiently desirable to make this equation balance out to a sufficient population of the animal being raised.
The only issue I really see is that in the long term this will likely lead to such species being slowly domesticated.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if it's analogous to the Dr. Oz / anti-vaccine set in the U.S. Those people have access to all the knowledge they could want, but you still couldn't shake their misguided beliefs out of them.
This article appears to support you. Letting people know that rhino horn is not medicine reduced the numbers of people wanting to buy rhino horn.
This article appears to support you. Letting people know that rhino horn is not medicine reduced the numbers of people wanting to buy rhino horn.
It's really fascinating, and similar to the arms race in detecting purity levels in drugs. Also, mobs and stuff too make it pretty exciting and non-typical 'startup' work.
To the Chinese, consuming these things (rhino horns, bear gall bladders) isn't crazy. It's more or less mainstream, though of course it has zero scientific credibility beyond the placebo effect.
Keeping the species alive is better than not. Now, we try to figure out humane farming, if we want to