3 days ago
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Women protecting rhinos from poachers
Six people, including a well-known rhinocerous breeder, person been charged successful South Africa successful transportation to an planetary rhino horn trafficking web aft a seven-year investigation, officials announced Tuesday.
The suspects are accused of smuggling 964 horns worthy $14.1 cardinal to amerciable markets successful Southeast Asia. They look charges of fraud, theft and violating a nationalist biodiversity law, the South African authorities said.
Trading successful rhino horns is ineligible successful South Africa among citizens, but section laws bash not let for their export owed to an planetary ban.
The probe by the country's specialized Hawks constabulary portion "is a almighty objection of South Africa's resoluteness to support its earthy heritage," Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Dion George said successful a statement. "The Hawks' enactment shows that our enforcement agencies volition not hesitate to prosecute those who plunder our wildlife for transgression profit."
Among the six suspects is John Hume, the erstwhile proprietor of the world's largest rhino conservation farm. The 19,270-acre "Platinum Rhino" tract successful a bluish state of South Africa was bought by the African Parks NGO successful 2023 and is location to astir 2,000 animals, astir 15% of the world's remaining chaotic colonisation of confederate achromatic rhino.
Hume, successful his mid 80s, and the 5 others appeared successful a magistrate's tribunal successful the superior Pretoria and were granted bail, a spokesperson for the Hawks told the Agence France-Presse.
John Hume poses for a photograph connected his ranch and rhino workplace extracurricular Johannesburg, South Africa, successful a Dec. 4, 2015 record photo.
Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg/Getty
Zimbabwe-born Hume sparked contention successful 2017 by organizing a three-day online auction of horns helium had amassed by sawing them disconnected the rhinos successful bid to forestall their sidesplitting by poachers, though the merchantability attracted less buyers than anticipated.
Once abundant crossed sub-Saharan Africa, rhino numbers fell dramatically owed to hunting by European colonizers and large-scale poaching, with their horns highly sought aft connected achromatic markets, peculiarly successful Asia, wherever the terms by value rivals that of golden and cocaine.
Alongside ivory, the horns are coveted arsenic presumption symbols oregon utilized successful accepted medicine for their expected aphrodisiac properties.
The enactment Save the Rhino praised the arrests connected Tuesday.
"Disrupting transnational organised transgression is indispensable to stopping poaching, allowing populations to retrieve and ensuring rhinos person a aboriginal successful the wild," the group's CEO, Jo Shaw, said successful a statement.
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