NATIONAL NEWS - A biotech startup company is trying to end poaching by in future flooding the market with fake rhino horns, but some rhino conservationists don’t agree with this approach.
A startup called Pembient is taking a novel approach to rhino conservation: 3D printing rhino horns to flood the market and undercut black-market business, reports Business Insider.
Seattle-based Pembient is trying to solve the rhino poaching crisis with a 3D printer and some clever economics.
The idea is to “bio-fabricate” rhino horns out of keratin – the same material that fingernails and hair are made of – using 3D printing to undercut the horn market.
The horns are genetically identical to real ones on the “macroscopic, microscopic and molecular” level, Matthew Markus, Pembient’s CEO and cofounder, told Business Insider. The fabricated horns, once perfected and market-ready, will look and feel so real that distinguishing them from the natural ones will be impossible.
According to a paper published in the journal Biological Conservation, the art and antiques market in China largely drives the problem. Most buyers in China purchase high-value rhino-horn carvings as investments and collectible items, according to the study’s lead author Yufang Gao.
Pembient’s fabricated horns will eventually be sold as raw material to traditional carvers in Asia, and used to produce high-value goods like bracelets and combs that fetch exorbitant prices on the black market.
Matthew Markus .
By pushing fabricated horns into the supply chain at various points, Markus explained, people won’t know whether they’re buying real rhino horns or fake ones.
He believes that because the fake horns are much cheaper to produce, they could be sold at a lower cost and push prices down eventually. As their won’t be a way to tell the difference, the price of rhino horn should go down. Markus hopes his plan will eventually lower incentives for poachers to slaughter rhinos.
This approach is a radical departure from traditional conservation methods and some conservationists don’t agree with the strategy.
The International Rhino Foundation and Save The Rhino International, two NGOs dedicated to rhino conservation, have pointed out that many rhino horns fetching astronomical prices on the black market are already fake.
A Chinese libation cup of carved rhinoceros horn.
“More than 90 percent of rhino horns in circulation are fake – mostly carved from buffalo horn or wood – but poaching rates continue to rise annually,” the organizations wrote in a joint statement.
The statement also argued that developing and marketing synthetic horns diverts attention from efforts to end rhino poaching, which is the “real problem”.
