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  Yahoo News 16 Apr 07
High alert in India over rhino poaching

Wardens at a national park in northeastern India have raised the alarm following a sharp rise in the poaching of endangered one-horned rhinos, officials said Monday.

"Six rhinos poached in about 100 days, including two of the beasts killed in the past week, is a matter of grave concern. A security alert has been sounded," Utpal Bora, a warden at Kaziranga national park, told AFP.

The park, situated in the northeastern state of Assam, is home to about 1,855 of the world's estimated 2,700 one-horned rhinoceros.

"We are certain that the recent cases of hunting the rhinos for their horns were done at the behest of a very organised international poaching syndicate which has pumped in lot of funds to attract shooters to kill the animals," Bora said.

Profits in illegal rhino horn trade are staggering -- rhino horn sells for up to 35,000 dollars per kilogramme (15,500 dollars per pound). Rhino horns are believed to have aphrodisiac qualities, besides being used for making medicines in parts of South Asia. The horns are also fancied by buyers from the Middle East, who use them for making ornamental dagger handles.

The fresh poaching incidents come at a time when park authorities believed the endangered one-horned rhinos were charging back from the brink of extinction.

"There was a time when poachers slaughtered about 50 rhinos annually in the early 1990s. But things have slowed down in recent years due to stepped up vigil and now all of a sudden we see a spurt in poaching again," Bora said.

Five rhinos were poached last year, while seven were killed in 2005. According to government estimates, about 500 rhinos have been killed by poachers during the past two decades.
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