ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************

For anyone with rhino horn in their collections (if your museum has collections) this is good to know...


Lucy Hale, C.I.G.
Education Programs Manager
Dallas Zoo and Children's Aquarium at Fair Park
[log in to unmask]
469-554-7304
www.dallaszoo.com




-----Original Message-----
From: International Rhino Keeper Association [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 11:33 AM
Subject: info-Burglars Hunt Down Rhinos in Museums

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/copyright?hl=en


Burglars hunt down rhinos in museums
By Laurent Thomet (AFP) - 13 hours ago

BRUSSELS - The natural science museum in Brussels has become the
latest victim in a series of burglaries carried out by a gang police
belief is profiting from a small, but lucrative, niche market for
rhino horns.

The two thieves snuck into the rhino gallery and ripped a stuffed head
off the wall. They carried it to a restroom, opened a window, and
dropped the 30-kilo (66-pound) trophy two stories down to an
accomplice waiting in a van.

"For 80 years we took care of it and from one day to the next it's no
longer there," said Georges Lenglet, vertebrate exhibit curator at the
Brussels museum, who has little hope of seeing the head again.

The museum had never been robbed until the July heist, when it became
the latest of a rising number of science museums in Europe targeted by
thieves for rhino horns, which can fetch tens of thousands of euros on
the black market.

"It's a nasty little piece of criminal activity," Patrick Byrne, head
of the organised crime networks unit at the European police agency
Europol, told AFP.

Europol suspects an Irish organised crime group is behind a spate of
robberies that has hit not only museums but also zoos, auction houses,
antique dealers and private collectors across the continent over the
past 18 months.

The gang, known to use violence and intimidation, is involved in drug
trafficking, money laundering and smuggling of counterfeit products,
but has seized too on a lucrative niche market in the sale of rhino
horns.

Scotland Yard says the spike in museum thefts is driven by a
significant increase in the value of rhino horns in Asia. Depending on
its size, a horn can sell for 25,000 to 200,000 euros (34,000 to
288,000 dollars), according to Europol.

The horns are usually ground into powder and end up in the Asian
market where they are prized for purported medicinal virtues to cure
fevers, headaches, typhoid and smallpox. Their use for impotence is
merely a myth.

The emergence of museum horn thefts coincides with an alarming surge
in poaching of live rhinos in Africa.

More than 200 rhinos have been killed so far in 2011, after 333 were
slaughtered in 2010, up from 122 in 2009, 83 in 2008, 13 in 2007,
according to Save the Rhino International, a London-based conservation
group.

Lucy Boddam-Whetham, Save the Rhino's acting director, fears the
robberies will only exacerbate the illegal trade.

"It's stimulating more demand and stimulating the market, not taking
pressure away from live rhinos," she told AFP.

Robberies have been reported by museums in Portugal, France, Germany,
Britain, the Czech Republic and as far north as Sweden. According to
Scotland Yard, 20 thefts have taken place across Europe in just the
past six months.

They have prompted curators to beef up security systems or even remove
rhinos from display.

The Brussels Royal Institute for Natural Sciences Museum did both
after the black rhino head, which dated from 1827, was stolen just
three weeks after a similar heist failed in the Belgian southern city
of Liege.

"It's quite sad," said white-haired, bespectacled Lenglet in front of
a display window now featuring two whole rhinos instead of three, and
one head rather than two, after the museum locked away its most
precious specimens.

The gang had clearly done its homework.

While one man distracted the guard by asking for information, two
others picked the lock to the display door. By using the restroom
window, the gang found a quick way to get the piece out without going
through the front door.

The suspect Irish gang has used both crude "smash and grab" techniques
and violence to snatch rhino heads, or more sophisticated burglaries
based on meticulous surveillance and reconnaissance work, Europol's
Byrne said.

"These people are indiscriminate in their criminal methods," he said.
The rhino heads are quickly sold on the black market, and the gang
launders the cash by purchasing real estate or other assets such as
high-powered cars.

Museums are not the only places that have raised their guard.

Earlier this year, Britain widened a ban on the sale of rhino
trophies, removing the right to sell those that dated before 1947,
after an unusual increase in their price at auction houses in Europe.

Even taxidermists are on the lookout for suspicious activities.

The European Taxidermy Federation (ETF) sent out a letter to its
members in early July warning them that Danish and Swedish
taxidermists had been contacted by suspicious buyers claiming to be
from Ireland or Britain.

The callers never say who they are and call from unregistered mobile
phones, the federation's president, Vagn Reitz, wrote in the July 7
letter.

"All this stinks of illegal activity," Reitz wrote, "so it is a very
good idea not to get involved if you are not 100 percent sure the
trade is legal."

Copyright (c) 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More >

-- 
The information in this article has not been edited, and may contain
information that is incorrect

***********************************************************************
For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.

Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html.

To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message  SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
[log in to unmask]