Rhinos are going extinct from poachers.
Why not have park rangers tranquilize rhinos and cut the things off. They grow back like fingernails, take only 3 years to come back, the endangered animal lives, poachers have no reason to shoot. Tourists won’t get to see the horns on the animals, but they’ll see more of them and they’ll survive. The government can sell the horns to raise money and people can buy them guilt free. A rhino horn farm might even be cost effective. Why has no park done this?
I believe this has been done in some cases, but I think there are problems - rhinos have horns because rhinos need horns. Sawing them off doesn’t necessarily doom the rhino, but it might not be good.
Also, selling the legitimately sawn-off horns would sustain a market for the poached ones, so that’s something conservationists might be reluctant to do.
From the wikipedia article:
I’m not sure if you’re right about the horn’s growing back, though. I can’t find a cite for it now, but rhino horn, if it grows in an adult at all, certainly doesn’t grow at a rate like fingernails. I’ve heard of (and seen) rhino horns with [pieces cut out of them, and the condition persists for years. If the horn were growing fast and wearing down, that wouldn’t be the case. And if the horn grows so slowly that this isn’t the case, then a “polled” rhino is effectively hornless from then on. I think those rginos referred to in the Wikipedia article are for all practical purposes hornless for life.
I have an endangered rhino solution. I spray it around my house to ward off the endangered crocodiles. Haven’t seen any endangered crocodiles around my house in AGES.
The horn is like a composite material constructed from fused hairs. I think it does keep growing, but it’s not going to be fast, I expect.
I can’t get them to dissolve, no matter how long I stir.
But, in the case of rhinos, “hornless” does not mean “harmless.” They are nasty customers with or without their horns. But surprisingly tractable, even pleasant, in captivity.
More then you wanted to know about rhino horn growth. Short answer, the nasal horn of white rhinos grows about 5-6cm/year.
This paper, Dehorning African Rhinos: A Model of Optimal Frequency and Profitability concludes that dehorning would have to be done annually, and because of the danger of injuring or killing the rhino during the process, it’s not a viable option. The whole paper isn’t viewable here, but the first page and summary are.