Cecil the lion's killer found to be American dentist

It is interesting, and this may be the way to save other species as well.
The problem is that rhinos are not really easy to breed.
But lions and other game is being bred for hunting all over Africa, so breeding might be an option for rhinos too.

 

Trophy hunting is one thing; people from both sides of the argument tend to become very agitated about this issue. It's a bit like with Marius the giraffe; once an individual animal has been named, people seem to react much stronger. Maybe we should start giving all remaining Java rhinos, vaquitas etc. cute individual names...

The luring out of the park, the prolonged tracking of the wounded animal and the attempts to deliberately destroy the GPS collar (if the media is to be trusted on this) are among the things I found most unsettling in this case.

As for rhinos bred for horn consumption: aren't Southern white rhinos already bred for hunting in South African game farms?

 

Unfortunately they're too hard to monitor and too rarely seen to name every individual, but I believe this tactic is already being used for kakapo.

 

Rhino horn can be obtained without killing the animal, and it grows right back. The rhino ranchers would have good incentive to raise, take care of, and breed the rhinos. Rhino poaching is very dangerous and the legal consequences for some countries in Africa are quite harsh, so if the price goes down, it won't be worth the risk. I think it could work, perhaps, and aren't there farms that breed rhinos for trophy hunting?

 

Messing with celebrity animals is a good way to get people calling for your head, so maybe it is a smart conservation tactic. Though vaquitas aren't seen frequently enough to identify individuals.

 

Yep, and if scaled up to a point it could crush the Rhino horn black market (like others have said it is dangerous) therefore cutting back on poaching of the wild brethren.

 

You forget something about the rhino horn harvest: poachers (or rather, the salespersons behind the poachers) might not want sustainable harvesting to be established. Rumor has it that rhinos are deliberately wiped out these days to increase the price. And how would you make sure to differ between poached and farmed horn?

 

Then you described the economic justification for a potential legal rhino horn/ivory/pixie dust market. They are still going to poach. But what put the bootleggers out after Prohibition was the above board markets always function better. You have a sustainable price system, less risk, and a theoretical court system instead of violence to solve disputes.

 

Yet you still face the problem that you need an as good as possible forgery-proof differentiator between legal and illegal rhino horn.

3D printing of organic material, may it be rhino horn, ivory, shark fins or pixie dust (is that organic, too?), might be the way to go, once you solve the problem mentioned above. Maybe add a miscroscopic serial number, like in Blade Runner? Still, I guess customers would still long for the "real stuff"...

Can we save the rhino from poachers with a 3D printer? | Environment | The Guardian

 

Yeah, that's one of the problems that critics of the idea bring up. There's also concern that allowing legal, farmed rhino horn would raise demand. Not sure how that would work, maybe since it would be seen as condoning the ownership/use of rhino horn that more people would go for it, or maybe that more people would be willing to buy rhino horn if it was obtained ethically, so even with increased supply price might remain high. I dunno.

As for 3D printing, I can't really picture that working out. Most of the people who want rhino horn either do it out of superstition or status symbol. Rhino horn is made out of the same stuff as our hair and fingernails, yet it's still sought after as some kind of special medicine. People who want it to show off their wealth would probably view the 3D printed stuff the same way people view knockoff Chanel merchandise.

 

Exactly, rhino horn is not a logical commodity. I was just talking theory. I am in no way in favor of actually farming out rhinos, especially at the numbers they are now. If it was a logical commodity, flooding the market would the sure fire way to end Rhino poaching.

 

It is used for Kakapo and has been for several decades now since the active 'hands on' conservation efforts with them started.

I've read that the Lion 'Cecil' was named after Cecil Rhodes and was originally one of a two-male brother coalition, the other was named Leander after another famous person. They fought with another male in the Park. Leander was killed, and the rival was seriously wounded and had to be destroyed. That left Cecil as the dominant male in that area.

Regarding the description of 'friendly'- presumably it means familiar with tourists etc rather than having really lost all fear of people and therefore being dangerous. I cannot see why anyone would want to hunt a splendid animal like this, particularly by shooting it with an arrow resulting in many painful hours for the animal before it was killed cleanly, that's beyond me.

 

Walter Palmer the dentist concerned also sexually abused a member of his female staff both verbally and physically . He paid her an out of court cash settlement. Apparently an elephant was next on his agenda after Cecil the lion, he is currently in hiding, nobody can find him.