A sedated rhino is being ready earlier than a gap is drilled into its horn and isotopes fastidiously inserted, at a rhino orphanage in Mokopane, South Africa, Thursday, July 31, 2025.
Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
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Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
MOKOPANE, South Africa (AP) — A South African college launched an anti-poaching marketing campaign Thursday to inject the horns of rhinos with radioactive isotopes that it says are innocent for the animals however may be detected by customs brokers.
Underneath the collaborative venture involving the College of the Witwatersrand, nuclear power officers and conservationists, 5 rhinos have been injected in what the college hopes would be the begin of a mass injection of the declining rhino inhabitants.
They’re calling it the Rhisotope Mission.
Professor James Larkin drills a gap right into a rhino’s horn to inject radioactive isotopes, at a rhino orphanage in Mokopane, South Africa, Thursday, July 31, 2025.
Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
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Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
Final yr, about 20 rhinos at a sanctuary have been injected with isotopes in trials that paved the best way for Thursday’s launch. The radioactive isotopes even at low ranges may be acknowledged by radiation detectors at airports and borders, resulting in the arrest of poachers and traffickers.
Researchers at Witwatersrand’s Radiation and Well being Physics Unit say that checks performed within the pilot research confirmed that the radioactive materials was not dangerous to the rhinos.
“We’ve got demonstrated, past scientific doubt, that the method is totally protected for the animal and efficient in making the horn detectable via worldwide customs nuclear safety programs,” mentioned James Larkin, chief scientific officer on the Rhisotope Mission.
“Even a single horn with considerably decrease ranges of radioactivity than what will likely be utilized in follow efficiently triggered alarms in radiation detectors,” mentioned Larkin.
The checks additionally discovered that horns could possibly be detected inside full 40-foot transport containers, he mentioned.
The Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that the worldwide rhino inhabitants stood at round 500,000 initially of the twentieth century however has now declined to round 27,000 because of continued demand for rhino horns on the black market.
South Africa has the biggest inhabitants of rhinos with an estimated 16,000 however the nation experiences excessive ranges of poaching with about 500 rhinos killed for his or her horns yearly.
The college has urged non-public wildlife park homeowners and nationwide conservation authorities to have their rhinos injected.
