Story courtesy of Rhino Rescue Project:
Suuuuuuuper excited about our upcoming horn treatment trip…! Months worth of painstaking research into improved horn devaluation methods have resulted in some… Nifty new gadgets we can’t wait to experiment with.
Not only has our bulky old infusion device made way for a sleek new model that fits snugly into the palm of your hand, but infusion to contaminate rhino horns (which can produce variable results from horn to horn) is now being boosted with radioactive isotopes placed inside the horn.
Why? Because these irradiated horns will be virtually impossible to smuggle across international borders (a single horn can be picked up inside a fully packed 40ft shipping container – even with the most basic scanning equipment). This development assists in closing legal loopholes that allow horns to leave South Africa in diplomatic baggage, for instance, and ensure that – should rhinos with treated horns be targeted by poachers – the perpetrators will now be pursued by international law enforcement agencies, all of whom have strict instructions to prevent so-called “orphan” sources of radiation to enter their countries by any means possible. Guess you could say our anti-poaching work is going nuclear…!
