A Czech zoo burned around 132lbs of rhino horns yesterday, part of an international campaign designed to highlight the plight of a species being driven towards extinction by poachers.
Demand for rhino horn is high in parts of Asia, where it is an ingredient in traditional medicine and is also used as an aphrodisiac and as a status symbol for growing numbers of the newly wealthy.
The Czech Republic has become a major transit point for rhino horn trafficking in recent years. Last year, Czech authorities seized 24 white rhino horns worth an estimated $5million and charged 16 suspected members of an international ring smuggling the prized material to Asia.
The Dvur Kralove zoo, some 90 miles north-east of Prague, organised the burning on the eve of World Rhino Day on September 22.
The demand for rhino horns shot up around that time after rumours that a Vietnamese minister's relative had been cured of cancer by the horn. There is no scientific evidence to support that claim.
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