The figures speak of the loss; they rise every day as Kenya Wildlife Service, anti-poaching crusaders and conservancies paint a grim picture of the survival of the country’s elephants and rhinos.

Late last month, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) released a damning report that showed 192 elephant carcasses were found in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem during an aerial survey. Of the carcasses with no tusks, 117 are on the Kenyan side and 75 in Tanzania, with 84 per cent of the carcasses being found outside the Masai Mara Game Reserve.

READ: Over 7,000 elephants counted in joint aerial census

Poachers are having a field day or so it is said. The elephants and rhinos are in the middle of a carnage, fuelled by Asia’s unending quest for aphrodisiacs and to keep up with certain cultural beliefs.

The carcasses are a message: We were here and we will be back, because our Asian paymasters have to satisfy their pleasures, live to their traditional beliefs and exude class from their exotic ivory carvings.

Questions abound: Is it that the Chinese growing middle class can now afford the prized material? For what? As a sign of prestige or as an aphrodisiac?

Recent records from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) show that close to 80 per cent of the illegal ivory ends up in China and Vietnam.
Last year, more than 150 Chinese citizens were arrested across Africa, from Kenya to South Africa, for smuggling ivory.

The price of ivory in Asia and most importantly China, has soared in the recent months to an all-time high. Currently, ivory trades at a wholesale price of $2,100 per kilogramme in China, up from a mere $5/kg in 1989.

An August report by Born Free USA, a global leader in animal welfare and wildlife conservation titled Africa Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory says that between 2009 and June 2014, criminal networks trafficked as much as 170 tonnes of ivory or as many as 229,729 elephants.

What could be fuelling this rise in demand that has seen the ivory prices soar?

The Born Free report written by Varun Vira, Thomas Ewing, and Jackson Miller says that at markets in East Asia, rising incomes make for a large pool of consumers, who are not easily persuaded to change centuries-old preferences.

“The primary axis for the illicit ivory trade is from Africa to East Asia through the international shipping container system. Majority of the shipments exit Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique to China, Thailand and Vietnam,” says the report.

“The Chinese and other East Asian cultures cling to certain superstitions very tightly. We are dealing with people who believe that ground rhino horn is a source of sexual prowess, absence of scientific evidence notwithstanding, slowly costing us our wildlife,” Michael Mwaniki, a wildlife activist said.

According to Mr Mwaniki, rhino horn has been used in Chinese medicine to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, snakebites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning, and “devil possession.”

“Their traditional doctors ground the horn into a powder. It is then dissolved in boiling water and consumed by the patient as a drug. Medically, it has not been proven to have a curing effect though there are suggestions that overdosage could cure some ailments,” Mr Mwaniki said.

Chinese traditional medical practitioners insist that the powers of ivory and ground rhino horns are limited to detoxification, reducing temperature to help with fever and improve blood quality, though none of these claims have been medically proven.

Chinese and other East Asian citizens go to great lengths to either use rhino powder or own ivory pieces. New reports are suggesting that Vietnam is rivaling China in the consumption of illegal rhino horns as they too believe it is an aphrodisiac.

Tom Milliken, a rhino expert with Traffic, an organisation that tracks wildlife trade, said that the surge in rhino horn demand from Vietnam has nothing to do with meeting traditional medicine needs nor satisfying the growing sexual appetite.

“This growing demand is basically to supply a recreational drug to party-goers who would want some action thereafter or to con dying cancer patients out of their cash for a miracle rhino horn cure that will never happen,” said Mr Milliken.

In November 2012, WildAid and African Wildlife Foundation worked with Horizonkey Research Consultancy Group to interview 963 urban residents in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou on the awareness of rhino conservation status, the consumption of rhino horn in China, and what might be done to deter consumption and poaching. In the study, 47 per cent of residents who buy and consume rhino horn believed that it is an aphrodisiac and has medicinal value.

Last year in Vietnam rhino horns competed with gold in sales prices. It sold for $1,400 an ounce, while gold was selling for $1,540 an ounce. This explains a demand unrivaled by even other precious metals.

In an interview with NPR, Douglas Hendrie, a technical adviser to Education for Nature, a Vietnamese non-governmental organisation, said that in Vietnam, using rhino horns has now become a status symbol.

“It’s the fad. You are viewed differently when you have it. It is believed that it can cure almost anything including a hangover. It is also used as an expensive gift and bribe to government officials. The value of ivory has grown so much within the Vietnamese streets that it is now almost a currency,” said Mr Hendrie.

The demand from the wealthy is driving up the trade to the extent that even fake rhino horns and elephant tusks in China and Vietnam sell like hot cake and are thus hard to come by. Most unscrupulous traders are now selling buffalo horns to unsuspecting customers. There are also reports that hardened plastics are being molded into rhino horn shapes and passed off as real.

Last year alone in a single bust, two Vietnamese men were arrested with rhino horns worth $1.5 million in Bangkok, Thailand and Ho chi Minh city. To explain the magnitude of rhino horn consumption in Vietnam, Traffic terms it the country with the highest sales of rhino grounding bowls.

Mr Mwaniki said that last year alone, 800 rhinos were slaughtered within the East, South and Central Africa region, a level that should cause worry.

“Their horns were hacked off to fulfill the desires of a people who know very little about rhinos but wouldn’t care because they can afford to buy it any way,” said Mr Mwaniki.

East Asia is experiencing an economic boom with more people joining the middle and millionaire class. This new-found wealth is fanning poaching in African nations as the trade grows with their increased demand. Africa is thus paying the heaviest price in this $19-billion-a-year trade.

“With the new-found wealth comes prestige and class. These new millionaires see the need to furnish their homes with exotic items and ivory tops the list. They can afford it and they must have it. After all, the Chinese way of showing class is by owning ivory pieces. With that, our elephants have to pay the price,” Mr Mwaniki said.

Another reason driving up poaching is that it has become lucrative for the middle men in China. Traffic reports that from a few sales, the illegal ivory dealers afford a luxurious lifestyle to the extent that they even change neighbourhoods.

China is trying to stem the trade through legislation, with a ban of ivory use as a medicinal component effected in 1993. In January, the Chinese government destroyed a record 6.15 tonnes of seized illegal elephant ivory. Its laws have also been amended to offer strict punishments for those caught engaging in the trade. Right now, illegal ivory trade attracts a jail term of between three and 15 years.

“The destruction of the ivory made a very important statement, by the Chinese government, which if sustained has a considerable impact on the trade within its borders,” Mr Milliken said.

So, any time a rhino or an elephant is gunned down in an African park, think about the myopic fads that its horns are going to be used for. From fanning the sexual thirst in a downtown brothel in Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam to helping a construction manager cure his hangover in Guangzhou in China or conning a desperate patient in Bangkok Thailand, who has been made to believe that taking a hot mixture of herbs and grounded rhino horn will cure their cancer.

With the current huge appetite from the Chinese, coupled with corruption in African countries that leads to complicity, Africa elephants and rhinos will have to die; till the paymasters say otherwise.