A herd of adult and baby elephants walks in the dawn light as the highest mountain in Africa Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, is seen in the background, in Amboseli National Park, southern Kenya, Dec. 17, 2012. Ben Curtis/AP
Two convicted elephant poachers are handcuffed at the jail in Oyem, Gabon, June 25, 2012. Poverty and lack of economic options are key drivers for people to get involved in poaching. While there is big money in illegal wildlife trade, it is the crime syndicates that see it - almost never the poacher who takes the risks in the field or faces jail time. The illicit trade in wildlife is worth at least 19 billion US dollars per year, making it the fourth largest illegal global trade after narcotics, counterfeiting, and human trafficking, according to a new report commissioned by WWF. James Morgan/WWF-Canon/AP
A Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management official checks ivory inside a storeroom in Harare, August 22, 2012. Zimbabwe has accumulated 50 tons of ivory and will ask the international body regulating its trade for permission to auction its stocks to fund conservation of the animals, the head of the country's wildlife agency said. The ivory has been confiscated from poachers or recovered as a result of natural deaths or government-sanctioned elephant culls, officials said. Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters
Green turtles swim in a tank at a turtle hatchery in Kosgoda, north of Galle, July 7, 2009. Of the world's eight turtle species, Sri Lanka is home to five. Turtle hatcheries along the coast provide a way of earning a living for the people running them and also help combating the poaching of turtle eggs. Vivek Prakash/Reuters
Members of the public help to move one of the three turtles killed by poachers near the Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach at the coastal port town of Mombasa, Kenya, December 3, 2012. Joseph Okanga/Reuters
A white rhino in Nairobi National Park on Sep. 19, 2012. Rhinos are being hunted systematically by well-armed and well-organized poaching crime syndicates for the profits to be had from rhino horn in the illegal wildlife trade. James Morgan/WWF-Canon/AP
An anti-poaching aircraft named Seeker is shown to reporters at the Kruger National Park, December 4, 2012. South Africa, home to nearly all the continent's rhinos, has taken its war against rhino poaching to the skies by deploying a high-tech, low-speed reconnaissance aircraft to detect illegal hunters before they strike. The plane is equipped with sophisticated heat sensors to detect animals and humans on the ground, and a quiet engine. Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
An oriental white stork spreads its wings on a box before it was released into the wild by its rescuers, who saved it after it was poisoned, in Tianjin, November 21, 2012. The endangered storks grabbed headlines when 20 of the birds died of poisoning in northern China. According to Xinhua News Agency, poachers poisoned the wild birds within a wetland nature reserve, where 20 were found dead and 13 others sickened, sparking a public outcry for intensified protection of wild animals and harsher punishments for those behind the deaths of the storks. China Daily/Reuters
Captain Michael Van Durme of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation holds a box turtle at a news conference in Albany, N.Y., March 19, 2009. An undercover investigation into poaching and illegal sales of New York's native turtles, snakes and salamanders led to charges against 25 people environmental officials said. Mike Groll/AP
In this photo taken Oct. 3, 2012, a room at the Game and Fish Department sits full of seized elk and antelope mounts in Casper, Wyo. Kyle Grantham/Star-Tribune/AP
Activists of the Center for Orangutan Protection have their face painted as orangutan during a protest demanding improvement of orangutans' welfare by the government at Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo outside the governor's office in Jakarta, Indonesia, Aug. 4, 2011. The activists said that the zoo did not provide decent living environment for their orangutans causing them to fall into depression. Orangutan populations in Indonesia's Borneo and Sumatra islands are facing severe threats from habitat loss, illegal logging, fires, and poaching. Dita Alangkara/AP
A male Sumatran tiger is kept in a cage while awaiting transfer from the Natural Resources Conservation Center in Aceh province to a safari park in West Java April 26, 2010. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has warned that the Sumatran tiger could be extinct within a decade due to poaching and illegal logging. Reuters
With rhino poaching on the rise, efforts to eradicate the practice are getting more creative. Dyeing rhino horns pink and tinging them with non-lethal poison is one way to discourage consumers from buying them.
•A version of this post ran on the blog Africa in Transition. The views expressed are the author's own.
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