Radioactive Device on Rhino Horns Rolled Out to Fight Poaching
- Live rhinos injected with pellets in South African project
- Rhisotope project is latest attempt to deter poachers
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Beckham, a 1.7 ton rhino named after the English footballer, on Tuesday had a radioactive pellet drilled into his horn as a program to discourage poaching of the endangered animals in South Africa scales up.
The Rhisotope Project, which is being run by Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, is just one of a number of ways ranging from staining horns with dye to cutting them off that conservationists in the country with the world’s biggest rhino population are seeking to protect the animals. It has the added advantage in that horns implanted with the pellets could be detected as they pass through borders, airports and harbors.