 Reference Base  Rhino poaching in Namibia from 1980 to 1990 and the illeg... |
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Martin, E.B., 1993. Rhino poaching in Namibia from 1980 to 1990 and the illegal trade in the horn. Pachyderm 17: 39-51, figs. 1-5, tables 1-5
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| Location: |
World |
| Subject: |
Trade |
| Species: |
All Rhino Species |
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The government of Thailand has not yet agreed to carry out a stock-take of rhino products nor has it agreed to initiate a ban on internal trade in all rhino products. The government has done very little at all to alleviate the problem. Rhino horn and skin continue to be brought into the country from both Africa and elsewhere in Asia. The government very rarely intercepts any of it. Recently, rhino horn has come onto the Thai market in a major way from neighbouring Laos. In February 1990, I saw eight horns for sale in Vientiane's jewellery and antique shops. I was told that most horns come from Laotian animals and that some pieces were quite old. The average retail price per kilo was $16,594. Almost all the buyers of rhino products in Vientiane are Thai businessmen who bring the horns and nails back home with them to sell. No government authority attempts to stop them from illegally importing these rhino products.
Thailand's traditional medicine shops contain many rare and endangered wildlife products, but these shops are almost never inspected due to the general apathy of government officers. The official reason for this was explained to me by senior members of the Royal Forestry Department (which has the jurisdiction for wildlife and the trade in their products): they do not have the expertise to identify Thailand's endangered species nor do them seem willing to learn. Thus, if they brought a pharmacist to court for trading in Sumatran rhino horn, the officials claim they could not prove the authenticity of the horn. On the other hand, for wildlife products such as rhino horn from Africa, there is no law prohibiting the possession and domestic sale of these products. As Thailand is a member of CITES, it must comply with the CITES regulation prohibiting rhino imports, but once it is in the country, all this horn from the black, white and greater one-homed rhino can be legally owned and sold. For the last few years, a new wildlife law has been drafted to prohibit possession and sale of endangered exotic species, but it awaits the approval of the Thai parliament before it can be. implemented.
In a survey of the Chinese medicine shops in Bangkok in 1990, Lucy Vigne and I found rhino horn (half African and half Asian) in 24% of the pharmacies we visited, and rhino hide in 46% of them. There is a greater variety of rhino products for retail sale in Bangkok than in any other city: horn ($21,354 a kilo for Asian and $10,286 for African), hide ($1,717 a kilo for Sumatran and $220 for African skin), and from the Sumatran rhino: nails (about $2,000 a kilo), penises ($700 each), dried blood ($160 a kilo) and dung ($32 a kilo).
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