Although the sale of rhinoceros horns is illegal worldwide, rhinoceroses (rhinos) are commonly poached (hunted illegally) for their horns, which can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram. Rhino horns are so valuable that one type of rhino is already extinct because poachers killed too many of them. All rhinos may soon become extinct unless something is done to help save them. Several ideas have been suggested.

The first idea is for wildlife experts to “dehorn” rhinos living in the wild. Dehorning means removing the horns of living rhinos to make them less attractive to poachers. Horns can be removed without hurting the animals if medical equipment and drugs to calm the animals are used. When this strategy was tried on a small scale in the early 1990s, none of the rhinos dehorned at the time were killed by poachers.

The second possibility is to educate consumers. The majority of rhino horn sold is used in medicines. Although rhino horn is believed to have health benefits, this belief has no scientific foundation. Rhino horn consists almost entirely of keratin, the same material found in human hair and nails. Keratin has no known health value. Educating consumers about keratin could greatly decrease the demand for rhino horn.

The third possibility is to legalize government sales of rhino horn. Some governments have large amounts of horn, taken from poachers they have arrested. This horn is often kept in storage. However, if government sales were legal, large quantities of horn that governments already have could be sold at very low prices. Poachers kill rhinos because consumers pay high prices for their horns. If governments started selling cheap rhino horn, rhino poaching would no longer be profitable and would probably stop, at least for a while. That might help endangered rhino populations to recover.