NPR. This is the indicator from planet money. I'm Darren Woods here with

Juliana Kim. Welcome. Hi Darien. You're a reporter on NPR's desk news hub and

today you have for us a story on rhino horns.

Right, so you've probably heard of lab-grown diamonds,

lab-grown meat, maybe even lab-grown milk,

but have you ever heard of lab-grown rhino horns?

I had not until you pitch this story.

You know, I guess the background here is that hundreds of rhinos are killed every year by poachers

who want to traffic their horns.

We've seen in little over a century their population going from half a million to fewer than

30,000.

Grim stuff.

Exactly.

I know in business the million dollar question tends to be how do we get people to buy stuff,

but in wildlife conservation the challenge actually is how do we get people to not want to buy

stuff like for coats, ivory and How do we get people to not want to buy stuff?

Like for coats, ivory, and rhino horns?

Conservationists have been working hard for decades

to bring demand for rhino horns down through things like bands. hard for

decades to bring demand for rhino horns down through things like bands and I guess stigmatization.

But a few years ago a handful of startups popped up saying that demand doesn't have to be a bad thing. If there was this synthetic

alternative to meet that demand for rhino horns, fewer animals would be poached.

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