SINGAPORE: Twenty pieces of rhinoceros horns were discovered and seized by the authorities in Singapore on Nov 8, the National Parks Board (Parks) said in a statement earlier this week. The rhinoceros horns weighed a total of 35.7 kg, the highest amount the city-state has ever seized.
NParks, along with the Airport Police Division of the Singapore Police Force, was alerted by air cargo handler SATS group about a suspicious shipment bound for Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
When officials inspected the shipment, they discovered the rhinoceros horns, along with 150 kg of other animal parts. NParks said in its statement that these were being identified at its Centre for Wildlife Forensics.
Additionally, Anna Wong, NParks’ senior director of wildlife trade, told South China Morning Post that in order to find out where the rhinoceros horns had come from, NParks is working with the University of Pretoria in South Africa for provenance testing.
“Demand is the key driver for this illegal wildlife trade. The community can play a part by ensuring their purchases do not contain these wildlife specimens. Rhino horns are believed to have medicinal values, but actually, rhino horns are just made of keratin, like your nails and your hair,” she told SCMP.
Indeed, rhinoceros horns have long been an ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and are believed to contribute to cures for several ailments, including AIDS, measles, cancer, and even hangovers, as they are said to “dispel heat and clear toxins from the body.”
However, a recent study showed that they don’t actually cure anything. While they do contain beneficial minerals, these are in too small amounts to do any good.
Moreover, rhino horns also contain toxic minerals such as arsenic, though also in low amounts. However, since the story involved rhinos in captivity, it is unknown whether rhinos in the wild contain higher amounts of toxic substances. And most of the animals in the illegal wildlife trade were caught in the wild.
“The contribution of this study brings us awareness about this product. For consumers who have no knowledge of Chinese medicine, it could pose more risks and be harmful if they take these products by themselves,” said Lixing Lao, the president of Virginia University of Integrative Medicine and co-chair of the Coalition of Wildlife Protection in TCM.
The demand for rhino horns and other animal parts has remained high, however, especially from China and Vietnam. The poaching of rhinos, particularly in South Africa, has grown in the past two years. Rhinos are considered to be highly endangered, and several subspecies have already gone extinct. There are likely to be only 50 left among the Javan and the Sumatran rhinos, and two females left of the northern white rhino.
The biggest haul of rhino horns was in 2018 in Malaysia, when 50 horns weighing around 116 kg were seized. /TISG
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