South African Researchers Test Use of Nuclear Technology To Curb Rhino Poaching 50
Researchers in South Africa have injected radioactive material into the horns of 20 rhinos to deter poaching, aiming to leverage existing radiation detectors at borders for early detection and interception of trafficked horns. The Associated Press reports: The research, which has included the participation of veterinarians and nuclear experts, begins with the animal being tranquilized before a hole is drilled into its horn and the nuclear material carefully inserted. This week, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand's Radiation and Health Physics Unit in South Africa injected 20 live rhinos with these isotopes. They hope the process can be replicated to save other wild species vulnerable to poaching -- like elephants and pangolins. "We are doing this because it makes it significantly easier to intercept these horns as they are being trafficked over international borders, because there is a global network of radiation monitors that have been designed to prevent nuclear terrorism," said Professor James Larkin, who heads the project. "And we're piggybacking on the back of that."
According to figures by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international conservation body, the global rhino population stood at around 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. It now stands at around 27,000 due to continued demand for rhino horns on the black market. South Africa has the largest population of rhinos with an estimated 16,000, making it a hotspot with over 500 rhinos killed yearly. [...] While the idea has received support from some in the industry, the researchers have had to jump many ethical hurdles posed by critics of their methodology.
Pelham Jones, chairperson of the Private Rhino Owners Association, is among the critics of the proposed method and doubts that it would effectively deter poachers and traffickers. "(Poachers) have worked out other ways of moving rhino horn out of the country, out of the continent or off the continent, not through traditional border crossings," he said. "They bypass the border crossings because they know that is the area of the highest risk of confiscation or interception." Professor Nithaya Chetty, dean of the science faculty at Witwatersrand, said the dosage of the radioactivity is very low and its potential negative impact on the animal was tested extensively.
According to figures by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international conservation body, the global rhino population stood at around 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. It now stands at around 27,000 due to continued demand for rhino horns on the black market. South Africa has the largest population of rhinos with an estimated 16,000, making it a hotspot with over 500 rhinos killed yearly. [...] While the idea has received support from some in the industry, the researchers have had to jump many ethical hurdles posed by critics of their methodology.
Pelham Jones, chairperson of the Private Rhino Owners Association, is among the critics of the proposed method and doubts that it would effectively deter poachers and traffickers. "(Poachers) have worked out other ways of moving rhino horn out of the country, out of the continent or off the continent, not through traditional border crossings," he said. "They bypass the border crossings because they know that is the area of the highest risk of confiscation or interception." Professor Nithaya Chetty, dean of the science faculty at Witwatersrand, said the dosage of the radioactivity is very low and its potential negative impact on the animal was tested extensively.
Ignorance is the worst disease (Score:1)
Medication? Status symbol? Idiocy. Poachers should be shot.
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You should kill the motivation if want to help.
The poacher occupation exists only because the poaching money is so much better than the next-best occupation over there. So, come up with a way to raise the rates so that poaching pays less, and you won't have to kill (or prosecute) them.
Or, if you want to kill, kill the end users, who create the demand, which is another way to push the poaching money to zero.
Rhino horn buyers (Score:2)
From https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
These days the main threat to the surviving rhinos comes from the illegal rhino horn trade between Africa and Asia. Certain buyers in Vietnam and China —the largest and second-largest black market destinations respectively—covet rhino horn products for different reasons. Some purchase horn chunks or powder for traditional medicinal purposes, to ingest or to give others as an impressive gift. Wealthy buyers bid for antique rhino horn carvings such as cups or
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These days? Trade in poached African animals to Asia has been a huge problem since at least the early 90s. I'm sure it has been compounded many times over with the drive of mainland Chinese business to take over Africa and turn it into a Chinese colony that we've seen develop since then.
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I remember reading about it in a Gerald Durrell book (they were autobiographical) back in the 1980s, and I have no idea which book it was so I can't look up when it was written - make it the early '80s or the 1970s. There was something about its supposed properties as an aphrodisiac (the horn being stiff) in traditional Chinese medicine.
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Another good countermeasure is to increase the value of live rhinos through tourism, trophy hunting, or whatever, creating jobs for locals.
That gives the local people an incentive to oppose the poachers, who are often their friends and neighbors.
This strategy has been a resounding success in South Africa and is now working in Kenya.
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Yep.
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Another good countermeasure is to increase the value of live rhinos through tourism, trophy hunting, or whatever, creating jobs for locals.
That gives the local people an incentive to oppose the poachers, who are often their friends and neighbors.
This strategy has been a resounding success in South Africa and is now working in Kenya.
I'd add in taking people that want to hunt rhinos on these trips to tag the horns with radioactive tracers. They won't have a lethal weapon but instead a tranquilizer dart gun. They get the thrill of a hunt, a "trophy photo" with themselves and the knocked out rhino, and maybe they can take the small pieces of the horn home that were created in the drilling of the horn to put in the tracer.
There could certainly be lawful hunting of rhinos for the meat, horn, hide, or whatever. Even if endangered there's
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Minimum wage? Where do you come up with these gems?
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Do I really have to quote you saying the people in the area Ned higher wages?
I got it directly from you.
Jfc, can't make this shit up.
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You can quote me correctly, or you can continue blabbering about "minimum wages" and whatever other straw men you choose to construct out of thin air. I know what you'll choose :))))
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You: The poacher occupation exists only because the poaching money is so much better than the next-best occupation over there. So, come up with a way to raise the rates so that poaching pays less, and you won't have to kill (or prosecute) them.
Ok, other than mandating a minimum wage higher than the going income for the average villager, what is your plan?
Go ahead, spell it out.
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You're going to stop crime by increasing the minimum wage?
No, by increasing market wages.
Where has that ever happened?
It's happened many times. If wages pay better than crime, then people will stop being criminals or at least switch to higher-level crimes.
Do states with higher minimum wages have lower crime rates?
Yes. There is no one-to-one correlation, but states with higher wages tend to have less crime.
States by violent crime rate [wikipedia.org]
States by minimum wage [wikipedia.org]
DC is the biggest outlier, with the highest minimum wage and the worst crime rate.
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I calculated the correlation coefficient between violent crime 2022 and minimum wage 2022 from Wikipedia (using the first value provided in the Wikipedia table when Wikipedia showed two of them due to complex rules). Excluding Whashington DC -> Correlation factor= +0.038 (absence of correlation). (Including Washington DC, correlation factor is +0.158).
I agree a better society (of which "higher wages" is just one component) leads to lower rates of violent crime, but this is not the dataset that proves it.
Re: Ignorance is the worst disease (Score:1)
Perhaps because crime pays does not pay in a measure of dollar values. It is the same reason men join armies and do stuff, because it gives them purpose, excitement and power, and if you donâ(TM)t channel that into good things like the military or humanitarianism then someone will come along and channel it into gangs and crime. Crime at the lower levels doesnâ(TM)t pay very well, much less than the federal minimum wage even but it gives people opportunities and options.
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Where has it happened? Please let me know where raising ye minimum wage showed lower crime rates the next year.
And how do you propose "raising market wages" if not by mandating a higher minimum wage? Markets don't magically increase wages above market rate to save rhinos. That makes no sense. The market pays the minimum required to get workers to show up to do a sufficient effort.
Why would employers in that or any other area start paying more?
Will higher wages end drug selling, the sex slave trade, burg
Re: Ignorance is the worst disease (Score:2)
I was going to post "Nuh, uh" and use Washington State as an example. High minimum wages, but an"advertized" high murder rate.
But then I realized that the murder news stories are all made up. Because we are trying to get a new lefty twink elected governor.
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Tough questions no one can answer always get modded down as flame bait and troll.
When I see that I know I've totally bullseyed a topic. Thanks!
No one will even attempt to directly answer these questions because the base premise I'm questioning is simply wrong and pure virtue signal bullshit.
Chalking up another valueless slashdot win but at least you clowns are amusing and keep me entertained.
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Severe punishment has been considered but only makes the whole situation worse. Poachers are locals who are trying to survive. Everybody in the local villages has a cousin who's a poacher. It's ok to put them behind bars, but if you start shooting them, you turn the locals against the preservation campaigns. They'll refuse to tip you on who is doing it or where it happens most, or they'll start giving shelter to poachers. This sort of issues are long lasting.
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Kaiju Rhinos (Score:3)
Re:Kaiju Rhinos (Score:4)
What could go wrong!
Many of the animals could die from rare cancers, in terrible suffering and without help.
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No Kaiju has ever died of cancer. Except for the earliest category 1 who were taken down with end,ess pounding with conventional weaponry, every single Kaori death was at the hands of a jaeger, none of whom had a cancer based weapon.
Whoosh!
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Really now? How am I concerned?
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Many of the animals could die from rare cancers, in terrible suffering and without help.
For fuck's sake........ You do realize you already contain radioactive materials, right? Carbon-14, Potassium-40, Uranium, Thorium......
They are using SMALL amounts....
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You do realize you already contain radioactive materials
Yes, I do. And? That's a reason to add more because?
Africa's wild life is in danger because of the abject poverty there, which creates economic motivation for poaching. Improve on that, and the poaching will go down.
They are using SMALL amounts....
Yes, "small" amounts that will trip the detectors at the border crossings. You might want to check what activities they are calibrated for ;)
But... (Score:2)
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Poachers with jaegers, maybe.
Hell yeah (Score:4, Funny)
Nuke the poachers!
It isn't visible, so it won't deter (Score:4, Informative)
Poachers will shoot the rhino anyway because the radioactive material isn't visible from a distance.
The middleman might get caught at the border, but the rhino is still dead.
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Probably they'll spot the hole after killing it, and saw it off or drill it out.
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The middleman might get caught at the border, but the rhino is still dead.
If the middleman can't move his goods, the market dries up, and there is no longer an incentive to shoot rhinos.
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Drug smuggling has been working so well despite our efforts to catch the mules and middlemen. It's enough for a small percentage to go through; it just increases the market price, and rich idiots are plenty enough to buy it all.
I think we need to look further in dehorning the rhino. It changes their behaviour, makes them feel vulnerable and avoid social contact https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org] but it's a life insurance. Rhinos without a horn stay alive and breed. Asocial dehorned live rhinos are better tha
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The middleman might get caught at the border, but the rhino is still dead.
If the middleman can't move his goods, the market dries up, and there is no longer an incentive to shoot rhinos.
It gets even better! Apparently, Vietnamese people use rhino horn powder to cure their headaches and other things. Let's see how that's going to work when they ingest radioactive stuff.
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Once the middle men realise there is a very significant chance of getting caught, demand will decrease.
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Poachers will shoot the rhino anyway because the radioactive material isn't visible from a distance.
The middleman might get caught at the border, but the rhino is still dead.
In the short term.
But then the middlemen can't sell the goods and the poachers can't get paid.
My only concern is geigercounters aren't that hard to obtain so the middlemen might simply be able to weed out the radioactive horns.
Bite (Score:2)
Traceable? (Score:1)
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OK, so directly detecting radiation from smuggled animal parts sounds like a good idea. How about making the radioactive material spread to anyone who handles the animal parts, especially if it's relatively long-lasting & difficult to get rid of. Could that be done harmlessly? That way, anyone who's involved in poaching & smuggling can be easily identified with a detector. If it's spread to people who aren't involved but come into contact innocently, they can still be of help to investigations. How does that sound? Is it feasible?
Don't have to really make it spread, just make people think it will hurt them via social media:
"20 ways radioactive rhino tusks have killed people. #10 will shock you."
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WeChat. But post anything bad about their favorite boner medicine and it will be taken down. Fast.
Back in 2020 when people were making fun of bat soup in China, no big deal. But someone said Covid spread by pangolins and some Chinese demanded that posts be deleted. You just don't go threatening the witch doctors' business.
Last resort (Score:1)
Maybe as a last resort they could capture and sedate the remaining rhinos, cut off and dispose of their horns and then set them free? I guess they need their horns for protection, etc., but maybe as a last resort?? Then again, maybe not...
More nuclear material (Score:3)
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I think it would actually work to just spread rumors/disinformation that the radiation is dangerous. The people taking rhino horn for ailments are not the smartest in the world.
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The people who shriek at any mention of the word "radiation" aren't that smart either. No matter what amount is being discussed. One can hope that the Venn diagrams overlap significantly. For the rhinos sake.