10 years for rhino horn smuggler

Rhino horns in a government storeroom: the escalating demand for horn is creating a poaching epidemic in southern Africa © TRAFFICJuly 2010—A Vietnamese national who attempted to smuggle rhino horn out of South Africa has been sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Zhong Whong, who works as a security guard in Vietnam, was found guilty in Kempton Park Magistrate's Court in South Africa of fraud and breaking the Biodiversity Act.

Enforcement officers at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport caught Whong with just over 16 kg of rhino horn in his luggage.

Whong’s claimed in mitigation that he was simply the courier taking the horn to Vietnam, but the Magistrate dismissed the claim and is said to have told Whong that fines were clearly not a deterrent.

Poaching of rhinos in South Africa is showing no signs of abating; on 17 July, media reported the last female White Rhino in Krugersdorp, a 1,500 ha game reserve north-west of Johannesburg, had been darted, its horn hacked off and left to bleed to death, leaving its orphaned calf behind.

Already there have been more rhinos poached this year in South Africa than the 122 killed in 2009, itself a record year—some reports claiming up to 136 animals had been illegally killed by the middle of July.