Rising demand for powdered rhino horn in Aisa has driven the price as high as US$50,000 per kilogram, roughly equal to the street price for cocaine in the UK, says a international wildlife conservation organization headquartered in the hamlet of Kingsfold, West Sussex.

White rhino and young in South Africa's Madwike Game Reserve [Environment News Services]

Mark Jones, programs director at Care for the Wild International, says increased demand and high prices have led to a renewed surge in rhino poaching.

"Reports of rhinos being killed, their horns sawn off, and calves left to starve, come in almost daily," Jones said. "Poachers and park rangers are often involved in shoot-outs, with deaths on both sides. It's a war."

Rhino horn is used in traditional medicine to treat anything from headaches to fevers, rheumatism and gout. Recent claims by a Vietnamese official that he used rhino horn to cure his cancer have escalated demand, says Jones.

"Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same stuff that makes up human hair and nails," said Jones. "It has no medicinal value - you might as well bite your fingernails!"

South Africa alone, which is inhabited by 70 percent of the world's remaining rhinos, lost more than 330 animals to poachers during 2010, almost three times the previous year's losses, and 30 times poaching levels in the 1990s. Another 21 rhinos were killed there in January this year, says Jones.

On January 31, the South African Press Agency reported that two Vietnamese hunters with permits to hunt rhino near Musina were caught allegedly trying to smuggle four rhino horns out of Limpopo. While the hunting was legal, the removal and transportation of the horns constituted an illegal act.

Populations of rhinos in other African countries also are being affected, with poachers using sophisticated equipment such as helicopters, modern veterinary drugs, night-vision goggles, and high caliber weapons.

Poachers are using aircraft to hunt rhinoceros, Zimbabwe's wildlife chief said February 1. Seven endangered rhinos were killed in southern Zimbabwe in December and January, said Parks and Wildlife Director General Vitalis Chidenga.

Reports from India suggest that beleaguered populations of one-horned rhinos in Assam are also being targeted, with horns being smuggled across the poorly protected border with Myanmar, also called Burma.

"Asia's rhinos, and black rhinos in Africa, are severely threatened by poaching," said Jones. "The last northern white rhinos disappeared a few years ago. The relatively more numerous southern white rhino populations are now being threatened. Even rhinos that have been moved from South Africa to Tanzania as part of a reintroduction program have been targeted."

The authoritative IUCN Red List of Threatened Species classifies the white rhinoceros, Ceratotherium simum, as Near Threatened with extinction.