Just 5,000 black rhinos and 20,000 white rhinos remain in the wild in Africa, where illegal hunters slaughter them for their horns. A 2011 Guardian article on “an epidemic of UK rhino horn thefts,” for example, attributed it to a demand for powdered rhino horn used in “traditional Chinese medicine.”“No Chinese would grind the rhino horn antique,” Gao said. al., Biological Conservation)The sales, however, plummeted in 2012, shortly after the Chinese government re-emphasized its ban on rhino horn trade. “So rhino horn is not actually a good investment economically or ecologically,” he said. Asian art expert and veteran “Antiques Roadshow” appraiser Lark Mason posed with a collection of Chinese rhinoceros horn cups in 2011.

Source: Washington Post September 10, 2016 12:00 UTC