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201319Oct19:39

Microchips to pro­tect rhi­nos in Kenya

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 19 Octo­ber 2013 | mod­i­fied 13 Sep­tem­ber 2014
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Efforts to con­serve Kenya’s dwin­dling pop­u­la­tion of rhi­nos is set to get a sig­nif­i­cant boost when WWF-​Kenya hands over 1,000 microchips and 5 scan­ners to the Kenya Wildlife Ser­vice (KWS) today. The equip­ment val­ued at over KES 1.3 mil­lion (USD 15,400) will be instru­men­tal in strength­en­ing active rhino mon­i­tor­ing as well as stock­pile audits (of rhino horn).

White rhinoWith poach­ers get­ting more sophis­ti­cated in their approach it is vital that con­ser­va­tion efforts embrace the use of more sophis­ti­cated tech­nol­ogy to counter the killing of wildlife. The deploy­ment of spe­cialised rhino horn track­ing sys­tems com­bined with foren­sic DNA tech­nol­ogy will allow for 100% trace­abil­ity of every rhino horn and live ani­mal within Kenya. This will serve to strengthen rhino mon­i­tor­ing, pro­tect the ani­mals on site and also sup­port anti-​trafficking mech­a­nisms nation­ally and regionally.

Fur­ther­more, inves­ti­ga­tors will be able to link any poached case to a recov­ered or con­fis­cated horn and this forms cru­cial evi­dence in court con­tribut­ing towards the prosecution’s abil­ity to push for sen­tenc­ing of a sus­pected rhino crim­i­nal. These tech­nolo­gies are now being used inter­na­tion­ally in sup­port of crim­i­nal jus­tice responses to wildlife crime as well as strength­en­ing inter-​agency col­lab­o­ra­tions (between cus­toms, police, jus­tice, wildlife agen­cies and defense).

At a con­ti­nen­tal and world­wide level, these tech­nolo­gies will expose the rhino horn trade chain and facil­i­tate the dis­man­tling of the net­works that pro­mote and sus­tain the Inter­na­tional Wildlife Trade (IWT).

The microchip tech­nique had been sug­gested about a year ago by the Rhino Res­cue Project in South Africa. Only they wanted to use, together with the microchip, indeli­ble dye for track­ing pur­poses and they even con­sid­ered using non-​lethal poi­son to make the horn unattractive.


The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at WWF-​global. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.
(Source: WWF-​global news, 17.10.2013)

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