Nature’s Guardians Vietnam project partner: Education for Nature Vietnam
Each year, more than 450 rhinos are killed because people in Asia use their horns as a show of wealth and power. Vietnam is a hot spot for rhino horn demand. Even though it’s illegal, hundreds of rhino horns are smuggled in and sold in Vietnam every year. More than one every day.
Each year, people in Africa raise more than $10 million from other wealthy people to stop the poachers. But the poachers are winning.
The ENV team are working to reduce demand for rhino horn in Vietnam …
Much has been done, but there is much more to do. We want to use the momentum of what has already been done to accelerate the end of rhino horn use in Vietnam.
Summary
Micah Siegel is a 12-year-old independent student in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. He wants to reduce the demand for rhino horn in Vietnam. I’m his dad, David. Together, we produce a weekly podcast interviewing experts on animal issues:
www.youtube.com/Nature's Guardians
Here is Micah’s interview with Rhino expert Markus Hofmeyr:
Despite much effort, not enough progress has been made to reduce the demand for rhino horn. We want to help. Our goal is to find a way to reduce the price of a rhino horn to zero, so the smugglers lose their business.
This has been accomplished to a large extent in China, where the demand for shark fins has dropped so much that most shark-fin vendors are now out of business. Much of the demand for shark-fin soup was destroyed by advertisements featuring Yao Ming.
The cost of protecting rhinos
All five rhino species are threatened, with two populations having fewer than 150 individuals. Governments and NGOs collectively spend more than $10 million dollars each year to protect rhinos, and still they lose about 400 rhinos to poachers. Over the next ten years, it could cost $100 million dollars to prevent 8,000 rhinos from being killed and their horns smuggled to Vietnam and China.
There is a cost in human lives as well …
We want to do this using kid power
The incentive to kill rhinos is still too high. Every single day in Kruger National Park, a rhino is slaughtered for its horn, often leaving orphaned calves behind.
Kids can have far more influence on society than grown-ups can. By working with kids from South to North Vietnam, we want to put together a program that will end the demand for rhino horn at its source.
Here, we want to lay out an agenda for meeting with groups of students and put forward some ideas for how we could help.
The goal of this project
The retail price of a rhino horn remains around $30,000 per kg. We want to publicize this price and use whatever tactics we can to drive that number to zero.
What has been tried so far
Here we want to make a list of what has been tried and how well it has worked.
Publicity
Advertisements
School awareness campaigns
Increasing sentences
Better policing
Better working with government officials
Etc.
Things that typically don’t work:
Shaming
Threats
Taxes
Education, showing people the facts
Magazine articles
Asking
Things that can work:
Publicly arresting wealthy users and putting them in jail.
High-profile celebrity campaigns.
Storytelling, especially wealthy people talking to wealthy people or kids talking to wealthy people.
Pressure from their peers
Pressure from children
We want to talk with people in Vietnam about how to use kid power to get the price to zero. We’d like to have a workshop to come up with a new plan. Here are some ways we want to discuss:
Publicizing the price of rhino horn. If we could get a newspaper or some prominent websites to display the price of rhino horns, it could help reduce the demand. It will show that we won’t stop until that price goes to zero.
High-profile events. We would like to have a few big events in Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City (and wherever wealthy people live), where we get kids to come and give speeches, tell stories, and get wealthy people to publicly join our campaign. We want news coverage, good visuals, and local kids to really rise to the challenge. We want to work with wealthy people who are setting an example. We want to show live rhinos and get kids to fall in love with them. If kids are emotional, parents and grand parents will find another way to show status.
Kid actions. Rhino horns are not effective medicine. They are like hair and nails. If we could get kids to cut their hair and nails and give them to their wealthy relatives, that might have an impact. As long as the price is above zero, kids keep cutting their hair short and their nails and give them to their relatives.
A challenge. In the US, there was a “bucket challenge” to raise money for ALS. People showed themselves pouring a bucket of ice water on their heads on YouTube and challenging the next person to do it. It worked. This challenge had 17 million participants and raised over $100 million for ALS research. What challenge could we create in Vietnam?
Throw them away. Kids can find rhino horns and throw them away. Watch:
What if you’re planning a party and just learn that your rhino horn has been thrown in the trash by your child? Would you punish the child? Would the child be seen as a hero at his/her school? Can we make this the new normal?
A drop box. Could all Vietnamese children find rhino horns at home and take them to a central, guarded drop box for destruction later? Could kids gather and turn in all rhino horns in the country in just one week? Could we drive demand to zero in one well-coordinated week?
A new law. Could Vietnam make it legal for anyone to take a rhino horn and put it into a drop box? Or could the president pardon anyone who drops off a horn? That way, people wouldn’t feel they are doing something illegal.
Turning offenders into champions. We want wealthy people to stop buying rhino horn. These people have the money to help us finish the job. In addition to turning in their horns, they could join and support our efforts to convince their peers.
A brand. We could create a clothing brand around “No Rhino,” or “R0,” or some catchy name in Vietnamese that kids could wear to help raise awareness. For example, U2 singer Bono created Red, a logo and brand that helps raise awareness and money to fight diseases and make medicine more affordable for all. Similarly, we could create a rhino brand and use it to represent a pledge. If you wear the rhino brand, you are responsible for people in your family not buying rhino products.
A toy mascot. What if we made stuffed rhino toys with their horns cut off? We could work with a toy manufacturer to make these a must-have for all kids. Then, when the number gets to zero, we could reveal that the toys have a hidden horn that comes out. Or we could send them a horn to attach. Or, they could have red stuffing, and the kids could cut off the horn and have it around to remind the parents. Then we could come up with a good use for them once they are no longer needed. Is there a toy company we can partner with?
A hotline. Education for Nature Vietnam already has a hotline to call and report illegal rhino products. How can we help boost this?
Corporate pledge. We’d like to work with companies to enroll their employees to help. Employees can take a pledge to have zero rhino horn in their families, and companies can pledge to discourage and report any use of rhino horn they see.
A rhino center in the middle of the city. We would like to find corporate sponsors to create an exhibition space and learning center, where families can come learn all about rhinos. There would be films, immersive video experiences, VR, and more. We’d like to set up rhino cams in Africa and have them live, so people can watch for rhinos in real time. This center would have a big display showing the price of rhino horn in Vietnam. There would be a drop box for rhino horns. Perhaps this could be sponsored by an upscale club or hotel. Could also have a rhino gift shop. We hope this will expand later to include pangolin scales, elephant tusks, and tiger bones.
A social signal. We could use a visible sign, like kids putting a dot on their nose every day to show solidarity for rhinos, until the price reaches zero. Or kids could cut just a bit of hair in one place on their heads to show everyone they care about rhinos. If it makes girls and boys look a bit ugly, then if they all do it, it will become a new norm, and it will tell older people it will go away when the price drops to zero.
A pledge and a public display of alignment. We could get people to bring their rhino horns to a central place to burn them at our big event. Thereafter, these people sign a pledge — no more rhino horns.
A victory display. When the price goes to zero, we would want all the vendors to bring their rhino horns to a public burning ceremony. We could bring in more horns from Africa and have a huge rhino horn burning event that would be seen worldwide (there are many horns stored in Africa).
Incentivize the sellers. If a vendor has paid $10,000 for a horn, he isn’t likely to just come drop it off. We could raise money to pay them some amount like $2,000 one time, an amnesty program. After the one chance, they will get nothing. Or, we could say that if they turn in their horns, we’ll take them off the criminal list, and if they don’t, the police will continue to pursue them. We want to find some way to bring the horns out of the system.
A trip to Africa. We would like to take wealthy families and their kids on a trip to Africa to see the rhinos and other amazing animals and make videos showing them to people back in Vietnam. That would create a new group of advocates telling their peers what they have seen. We have been to Africa many times, we know all the people in Africa who look after rhinos. We can easily put this trip together. That would let us make videos and other content in Vietnamese for Vietnamese media and audiences.
There are many possibilities. Kids could take turns spending the night at the rhino facility, “in jail,” to show that they are like the rhinos and have to suffer a bit to drive the message home to their parents and grandparents. Kids could get a small book of rhino information and have a meeting with their relatives and walk them through the facts and tell them what they plan to do to stop the poaching. Kids could promise to work 30 hours at the rhino center for every rhino horn their family buys.
These are just a few ideas. If we work together, we can find the money to do any of these things. A few wealthy Vietnamese families will want to help. If we need money, let’s find the money. Stopping demand is far better than stopping poaching. When we are successful, that will send a signal to kids in other countries to work on reducing demand for products in their cultures. If this works, we could next go to tiger bone, bear bile, and other products in Vietnam.
There is enough money. We are spending millions to protect rhinos in Africa now. All we need to do is gather our numbers and show how we’re going to get results.
The more we prepare, the more impact we can have. We would like to talk with teachers, students, and anyone interested in having an online workshop in late March 2024 to discuss these ideas and come up with a plan to implement in 2025.
If you’re in Vietnam and you want to work with us, please use the form below to get in touch and set up our first workshop.