For millennia humans have traded rhino body parts for meat, medicinal, ornamental, spiritual, and other purposes in Africa and Asia. The demand for rhino horn mainly for carving and as traditional medicine in eastern Asia, especially in China, is many centuries old. Due to human pressure, the rhino range for all three species in Asia steadily fell. In Africa in the 1970s the commercial use of horns soared from both white and black rhinos and reduced populations significantly, with horns mainly exported to Hong Kong, China, and southern Arabia. In the 1970s North Yemen, with new-found wealth, used tonnes of African rhino horn to carve into handles for traditional curved daggers called jambiyas. In 1977 Parties (member states) to the recently formed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted to prohibit all international trade in rhino products in an attempt to protect all five rhino species. Consumer states gradually banned their domestic rhino horn trade as well. In the late twentieth century millions of dollars were spent trying to save the remaining rhinos, with some of the scattered individuals brought into small, heavily guarded sanctuaries. Data on the rhino horn trade were collected regularly, notably in the main consumer markets to understand trends, essential to understand the demand and help law enforcement. There was a lull in both poaching and trade in Africa for about a decade over the turn of the century. From 2008, however, another poaching crisis exploded, mainly in South Africa, home to most rhinos by then, to meet demand for rhino horn among many newly rich mainland Chinese and Vietnamese. Corruption and a lack of law enforcement along the supply chain have enabled sophisticated international criminal networks, often African-based and Asian-run in the twenty-first century, to grow, trading rhino horn at high prices. Meanwhile, an exponential human population increase in rhino range states has reduced suitable, safe natural habitat. The Sumatran and Javan rhinos are almost extinct. The rising costs of protecting rhinos and restoring habitat is today’s added challenge and depends on political commitment and significant funding, as well as the tolerance of people in range states who want tangible benefits. Thus, the critical question some now ask is whether a credible, accountable provision of rhino horn from legal stockpiles can ever be developed in certain regulated consumer markets, to benefit people and help secure rhinos for them to flourish into the future in their natural habitat.