Crime and conservation: tackling the illegal trade in rhino horn
As attempts to save the rhino continue to fail, is it time to involve local communities?
Photo by Lucas Alexander
When Annette Hübschle first stepped into the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique to begin fieldwork for her PhD, she was taken aback. “It was surreal”, Annette says. “The reality of the situation hit me as soon as I entered the park. Rangers armed with rifles were running around, and one of them stopped to talk. He told me: 'the poachers live by the motto ‘get rich young or die trying.’ They live by the gun, die by the gun.”
As a criminologist and sociologist, Annette had previously studied organised crime in Africa, ranging from drug markets to human trafficking. Now she was about to embark on a journey to study a commodity with a street value higher than heroin or cocaine: rhino horn.
