Readers React: No, that horn from a poached rhino won't cure your hangover

Readers React: No, that horn from a poached rhino won’t cure your hangover

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Lunga and Faith, two calves rescued by the Rhino Orphanage in South Africa, eat their breakfast.

(Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times)

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Feeding time at the Rhino Orphanage, a nonprofit set up to save the calves left behind when poachers shoot down their mothers. The orphanage seeks sponsors to adopt and care for the baby rhinos in its care.

(Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times)

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After their afternoon bottle feeding, the rhinos sigh and collapse in a shady spot for a snooze. Staff members at the orphanage say the hardest thing is seeing them grow up and go back to the wild, knowing that after all the love and care, one day they may face poachers’ guns again.

(Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times)

July 29, 2015 9:32 AM PT

To the editor: Regarding your article about the rhino orphanage in South Africa founded to respond to the immense scope of the poaching going on there to obtain horns for purchase by people who consume it for, of all things, a hangover cure: (“After poachers slaughter their mothers, baby rhinos find a home at South Africa orphanage,” July 25)

My hope is that your article and similar pieces in other publications will spur international action to stop people from buying wildlife products. Consumers must be educated as to the impact of what they are buying. If there’s no market for rhino horns, there will be no more poaching. And if the rhinos were gone, what would be the next hangover cure?

Thank you for this extremely necessary article, difficult as it was to read. Please continue to report on what is happening with the wildlife trade.

Mary Clumeck, Santa Ana

To the editor: It is beyond belief that humanity can be allowed to obliterate yet another species just to hack off a totally ineffective horn to help someone procreate or get over a hangover.

I thought China controlled its people. Why does it not prohibit these products?

Could we not poison the horns somehow? Or at least announce the discovery that rhino horns actually destroy fertility and diminish manhood?

Peggy Ebright, San Marino

To the editor: Levy quarterly multi-million-dollar fines and impose various economic sanctions on countries that sell medications and products known to contain ingredients from animals that have been killed for their tusks and horns. Start with China and Vietnam, both mentioned in the article.

The animals belong to the world, and the human community should do everything possible to protect them from ignorant people who believe a tusk or horn can cure illness. It is sobering to think what the poachers will be told to kill next for their greedy patrons once these animals are driven to extinction.

Lynn Myers, Blue Jay, Calif.

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