'Rhino Coin': Can a Cryptocurrency Help Save Africa's Rhinoceroses?

Protected species of animals and plants are illegally sold online mainly due to buyers and sellers having no knowledge of laws or the consequences to the ecosystem. Enforcement Gaps Interface (EGI) is a software which uses machine learning to determine if the animal product is illegal or not.

Traditionally, whales have been studied through research vessels, which are hard to maneuver, and costly to make. However, drones with the ability to capture a whale’s snot, are providing a much easier, and cheaper alternative to whale research.

The poaching of rhinos in South Africa has seen a rapid increase since 2007, jumping from 13 deaths then to 1,215 in 2014. After concluding that guns alone were not the solution, a patrol of local women from impoverished areas were brought together in the Balule reserve to focus on efforts in removing snares, stopping bushmeat kitchens, setting up roadblocks and implementing educational opportunities in poor communities and schools. Since their start, the area has seen a 76% reduction in snaring and poaching incidents.

An increasingly popular way to attract foreign direct investment is to let the world’s wealthiest trade cash and property investments for citizenship. The $2 billion-a-year industry allows the ultra-rich to buy passports that permit visa-free travel to nearly the entire world, often with no residency requirements. Highly controversial, the industry is marked by a lack of transparency and concerns about what happens to civic ties when citizenship can be bought and sold.

Some South African ranchers who raise rhinos legally are advocating for a block-chain currency "Rhino Coin." They argue that secure stockpiles of rhino horn could generate much needed funding for wild populations. But the plan is fiercely opposed by many conservation groups, and its success depends on whether or not a global ban on trading horn ends.

At a decommissioned chemical depot, a lone biologist has been building artificial homes for burrowing owls. To date, he's installed some 182 burrows. Not only have his efforts helped bring a declining species back across the region, but his studies have gone a long way to better understanding the birds.

New DNA testing technology is showing promise as a faster, cheaper way to determine if a shark fin came from a protected species, an important task to curbing the illicit shark fin trade across the world. While experts warn that the technology won't act as a deterrent to the practice, it will help authorities better track and determine if shipments are suspect.

Local Ocean Conservation is in Watamu, Kenya has made approximately 21,000 turtle rescues and "treated more than 650 turtles in its rehabilitation center and clinic" since it's inception in 1997. The group responds to fishermen who have accidentally caught turtles in their nets and then remunerates the fishermen for their "time, effort, and phone calls." This incentive-based relationship combined with a ban on the international tortoiseshell trade has helped decrease the poaching of turles, and the group has now expanded their efforts to include more initiatives to protect the endangered species.

The nonprofit group Save Giraffes Now, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Northern Rangelands Trust, and local community members are working together to save the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe species. Rising lake levels and flooding have stranded the animals on its island, so they made a custom-built steel barge to relocate them to a protected wildlife reserve. It’s not easy to move giraffes, but so far they’ve successfully moved three out of nine of them.

A cheetah conservation project in South Africa has helped the cat population rebound over the years by securing them in wildlife reserves. The Cheetah Metapopulation Project started in 2011 when there were 217 cheetahs, but a decade later, there are now 419 across the reserves. While there is debate about whether the focus should be on the quantity of cheetahs or the quality of their enclosures, the project has been successful and they’re looking to share their cheetahs and conservation lessons with other countries.