These Rare Birds Are Being Slaughtered for Their 'Ivory'
The "horn" above the helmeted hornbill’s beak is even more lucrative than elephant ivory—and even rarer.
The helmeted hornbill is a huge, cackling bird native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. It has a wrinkly, featherless neck and a long, black-and-white banded tail. Atop its short spike of a bill is the “helmet”—a solid wedge of keratin (the same material that makes up your fingernails) called a casque.
That wedge, which male hornbills use for head-to-head airborne combat, may be their undoing. Around 2011, an explosion in demand from China’s new rich for this so-called “red ivory,” named after the hue the casque takes on when it’s carved, has led to wholesale slaughter of helmeted hornbills in Indonesia.
Organized criminal syndicates have spread throughout the tropical forests of Sumatra and Borneo, employing locals to shoot every hornbill
