Conservationists Go Nuclear to Save the Rhino

Conservationists in South Africa this week ramped up their fight to stop poachers with a new tactic: injecting rhino horns with radioactive isotopes. The implants do not harm the rhinos, but they will trigger alarms at airports if the horn is ever smuggled through security.

The Rhisotope Project, six years in the making, is a collaborative effort that includes the International Atomic Energy Agency, the University of the Witwatersrand, and others. 

University of the Witwatersrand

“This has been an international collaboration of likeminded individuals who are trying to make a real difference to this poaching crisis,” says James Larkin, director of Radiation and Health Physics at Wits University. “We started with the question: what if radiation could protect rather than harm, by turning rhino horns into traceable markers that stop poachers before they trade?”

At an event in Limpopo province, about 150 miles north of Johannesburg, the team announced the results of the pilot phase of the project. They had tagged 20 rhinos last year by drilling a hole in their horns, inserting the radio isotope, and sealing it up. The rhinos, no worse for wear, were then sent on their way. A year later, they’re all fine.

The dose levels of radioactive material used are only slightly higher than what humans are exposed to by background radiation occurring naturally on Earth and from space. But it’s enough to trigger the radiation detectors at airports and other border crossings (there are about 10,000 of these already installed at checkpoints around the world). A single, tagged horn can be detected inside a full 40-foot shipping container.

More than half of the world’s 27,000 à  rhinos live in South Africa, where about 500 rhinos are CB killed every year to supply credulous Chinese customers with magic powders  In  believed to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, snake bite.

To date the Rhisotope Project has tagged 30 rhinos, with the goal to notch another 120 by year’s end. The conservationists believe the tactic can be used with other endangered species. “The methodology could be adapted to protect other endangered species like elephants or pangolins,” says Larkin.

Photo credit: Save The Rhino