Poachers killing rhino are causing the wild animals to disappear in alarming numbers – a rate of three a day in South Africa. The animals are being targeted for their horns, which are prized as a folk medicine cure in countries like Vietnam and China. Ground into a powder, rhino horn sells for more per ounce than gold in those countries.
There have been all sorts of plans put forward to save the rhino, including increasing enforcement in South Africa’s parks and private reserves as well as trying to convince people not to use rhino horn. But Lara Logan introduces us to South African rancher John Hume, who has his own unusual and controversial plan to save the rhino. He is raising them like cattle and harvesting their horns. Hume successfully sued the South African government for permission to sell the horns legally, arguing that the ban on rhino horn sales had created the black market in poaching. He compares it to Prohibition in the United States.
Hume is loathed by conservation groups who have called his plan dangerous, but he’s finding some surprising allies among South African game officials, who are desperate for a solution to the poaching crisis.
To see the collateral damage from the poaching crisis, Logan visits a rhino orphanage. There, 400-pound babies who had their mothers killed by poachers are being raised by gamekeepers. These baby rhino will eventually return to the wild although for now, they need human protection.
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