The Daily Populous Tuesday December 9th, 2025 night edition
Authored by bbc.co.uk and submitted by EnvironmentalSong393

Namibia's proposals to lift the ban on the international trade in black and white rhino horns have been rejected at a key conservation meeting.

The result of the voting at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) earlier this week was adopted by the conference on Thursday in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

Namibia had also proposed overturning the ban on African savanna elephant ivory - this too was defeated.

Eyebrows were raised about the rhino horn trade proposals mainly because Namibia pioneered the practice of cutting the horns off rhinos in 1989 so they no longer have value for poachers.

Dehorning was followed by other southern African countries, such as Zimbabwe, Eswatini and South Africa.

Rhino horns are prized in traditional Asian medicine and are also status symbols in China, Vietnam, and some other south-east Asian countries.

Namibia tabled two separate proposals - one for black rhinos and the other for southern white rhino.

Both were resoundingly defeated, with only around 30 votes out of about 120 in favour.

Cites regulations require a two-thirds majority for a proposal to be adopted.

Dog_in_human_costume on December 8th, 2025 at 14:34 UTC »

They are flooding the market with fake ones anyway

ringadingdingbaby on December 8th, 2025 at 14:26 UTC »

Just like in Zimbabwe, the main supporters of this are conservationists who want to flood the markets with the huge stockpiles of horn trimmed taken from rhino's without hurting them.

This would make the value of rhinohorn plummet and likely protect the rhino's because it reduces the value of poaching.

So the decision is actually much less uplifting than it appears.

betweentwoblueclouds on December 8th, 2025 at 14:07 UTC »

Good.