UP initiative leads in rhino poaching prosecution

Abstract

In 2009, Dr Cindy Harper, Director of the University of Pretoria (UP) Veterinary Faculty’s Veterinary Genetics Laboratory (VGL), established a method to obtain a DNA profile from a rhino horn. Poaching of rhinoceros for their highly valued horn was only beginning to show signs of increasing at the beginning of 2009. As poaching of rhinoceros rapidly escalated during the next few years, Harper, together with investigators from the Kruger National Park and the South African Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Pretoria, considered how the discovery could assist with the protection of rhino in this international war.