South African researchers putting radioactive material into rhino horns to try to stop poaching

[thewayne]

It's an interesting concept. They tranq the rhino, then drill a small hole and emplace nuclear material. Presumably afterwards they fill in the hole and try to match the color, much like a dentist.

The concept is that radiation detectors at border stations will detect the material, forcing a deeper search of things passing through. Not a bad idea. They say they've studied their test subjects extensively and this represents no health threat to the rhino. So that's good.

But what the article goes on to say is that there are doubters who say that the poachers have other ways of moving rhino horns out of the country without going through border stations. And, with this information being made public, won't the poachers start carrying Geiger counters and possibly cut the horns down to exclude the radioactive material? I'm curious if the material will spread through the horn, making it all radioactive.

But it's always a case of cat and mouse, or whack-a-mole, when it comes to conservationists/rangers trying to thwart poachers.

The demand for rhino horn is "medicinal" as it's a popular ingredient in a lot of alleged medicines and treatments.

https://apnews.com/article/south-africa-rhino-poaching-nuclear-technology-f5b116134bfa5065d6ddb5b5ccf436b8

Comments

[gingeriana]

not educated enough in this
yet, immediately and strongly doubt that radiation implanted inside a live body can have no bad influence on this body

[ndrosen]

If I am not mistaken, the rhino’s horn is just keratin, like my fingernails, not live flesh. Beyond that it’s a question of how much of which radioisotopes are implanted, and how far the radioactive material is from the actual flesh of the rhino, where reproducing cells could potentially be made cancerous. The level of exposure might or might not be too small to be of any serious concern.

[thewayne]

One of the things about radiation is that it's important to differentiate between the kinds that are ionizing and those that are not.  IIRC, ionizing radiation is the type that is very harmful to people, I'm certain that they are using the type that is not.  Non-ionizing?  Your skin bounces tons of those particles off every day.