Adapt or Die

It is of course well known that if a face causes inconvenience one can always cut off the nose; and the principle can be as happily applied to wildlife conservation as to personal relationships or international politics. Mindful that the global religion prohibits any effective restoration of habitats and populations, a team of researchers has determined that rhinocerous poaching can be effectively reduced by amputating that part of the animal from which the poachers derive their profit. Besides being less attractive to poachers, dehorned rhinos are also less aggressive and less mobile, thus leaving all the more scope for a more economically sustainable approach to their territorial rights. Whether the same researchers advocate defeating the ivory trade by sawing the tusks off all the wild elephants, or reducing human sex-crimes via universal and compulsory genital mutilation, remains as yet unclear.