Rhino drinking
This is so with the first set of rhino poaching statistics due to be published for 2015. The press conference and publication due today has been postponed because the departments that were to be involved in the press conference had 'timetable clashes'.
With a current investigation going on that will probably lead to South Africa asking for a legal rhino horn trade market at next years CITES meeting it is obviously beneficial to cloud the waters where the scale of the poaching epidemic is concerned.
With official figures hard to come by then unofficial reports need to be used as an indication about the effectiveness of anti-poaching activities.
One of the unofficial statistics compiled on rhino poaching in South Africa is put together by OSCAP (Outraged Citizen Against Rhino Poaching) who have their own system in place to monitor rhino deaths and court cases.
Comment: Of the 200 South African rhino hunts in 2013, only 15 were genuine hunts. The rest were rhinos shot by mostly Vietnamese 'pseudo hunters', who pay for the privilege of trophy hunting but have no intention of ever mounting their trophy on a wall. The economics are simple: the cost of hunting is about US $20,000, but the 3.5 kg horn is worth many times more when ground up into a fine dust, for sale as a 'medicinal' product. Current prices are estimated at up to US $75,000 per kg. It is now known that rhino horns have no medicinal value at all; chemically they are indistinguishable from horses' hooves and human toenails. But Vietnamese traffickers are fuelling demand by marketing new 'benefits' of rhino horn, as an aphrodisiac or a cure for hangovers, or cancer.