Grahamstown man protests in unique way against rhino poaching

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

A Grahamstown man has posted his toenails to the Chinese embassy in Pretoria because he is upset with the escalating number of rhinos killed by poachers.

Mark Wilby clipped off his toenails, put them in an envelope and posted them.

In a YouTube video, he called on other South Africans to do the same.

Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same protein in hair, fingernails and toenails, but some Asian countries believe it has medicinal qualities.

The embassy told The Star it had not yet received the mail by Tuesday afternoon.

Algoa FM News spoke to Wilby.

"The reason that I did that was out of a sense of frustration about the scourge of Rhino poaching and I have been to meetings and signed petitions and I just get a sense that while these are all very earnest valid endeavuors I don't know that the message is reaching the right people and I just did this out of sheer frustration"

Wilby says in doing this he is not blaming the Chinese people or authorities for the scourge of rhino poaching.

" I think that they are the only people that are actually able to help us to find out more about what this market is in Rhino horn, because we know desperately little about it and I think we are never going to stop this thing if we don't actually really get to understand it and get the powerful authorities on our side to help re-educate or change peoples attitudes" Wilby said