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The number of criminal groups trading in rhino horns has boosted poaching in some countries of African, putting the endangered animals at risk of extinction, said the conservation groups and U.N. wildlife pact.

Although the international trade in rhino horns was banned to guard these wildlife species from extinction, many traders in Asia and the Middle East pay bulky prices for these horns since they are considered a powerful medicine as well as a symbol of status.

There is an increased demand for rhino horns from countries including Yemen and China that is driving this illegal trade in Africa mostly in Zimbabwe and Congo. These two African countries have the worst records in poaching and involvement in illegal shipments as revealed by the wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC and environmental group WWF.

“The situation in Congo and Zimbabwe is a particular concern,” Steven Broad, executive director of TRAFFIC, said in a statement during a meeting that lasted two weeks in The Hague of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

“It tallies with an increase in the organization of criminal horn trading networks operating in Africa,” Broad said.

They exposed that fact that 60 percent of the rhino population was illegally killed by poachers between 2003 and 2005 in Congo, according to TRAFFIC data. Two-thirds of all mortalities over the same period, affecting one in eight animals was accounted to poaching in Zimbabwe.

In an effort to prevent poaching in Zimbabwe, the official media reported that the process of dehorning rhinos started last month.

To address the problem,

The 171-nation CITES pact that regulates wildlife trade, called for better cross-boarder collaboration between countries along rhino horn smuggling routes and tougher domestic controls as a way to solve this problem. They also urged better management of horn stocks to avoid horns leaking into illegal markets.

Relentless poaching in the 1970s and 1980s nearly drove the world rhinos to extinction. Black rhino numbers declined by a staggering 98 percent between 1970 and 1992 largely to supply the Far East medicine trade.

“CITES is concerned that some rhinoceros populations have continued to decline drastically and that four of the five species are threatened with extinction,” the pact said.

The biggest danger to rhinos remains horn demand and TRAFFIC realized a rise in illegal trade between 2000 and 2006, which it attributed to the increased complexity by which some Southeast Asian criminal trading networks operate in Africa.

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By Grace Nakawooya