(Bloomberg) -- The number of rhinos killed illegally in South Africa plunged in May and June after more than 1,000 had their horns removed by park staff in a reserve targeted by poachers who sell them to buyers in East Asia.
While criminals killed 229 rhinos in the first half of the year compared with 231 a year earlier, they eliminated 43 in May and June compared with 76 in the same months of 2023.
“This reduced loss is thought to be attributable to the dehorning of rhino populations in KwaZulu-Natal and specifically in Hluhluwe iMfolozi Park,” Environment Minister Dion George said in a statement.
Rhinos in South Africa, where almost all of the world’s population of the endangered animals live, have been under siege from poachers for more than a decade. They shoot the animals with assault rifles, often by the light of the full moon, and then hack off their horns. Those are ground down into potions, erroneously believed to cure cancer and boost virility.
Southern white rhinos were driven almost to extinction a century ago. The numbers have since been built up from a population of about 50 that then lived in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park. Northern white rhinos, which are very similar but lived across east and central Africa, are functionally extinct with just two left in a park in Kenya.
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