When people paid to help save the rhino, did they really imagine it was so that the rhino’s head
could one day hang on someone’s wall?
How Do You Save Endangered Rhinos?
For the first time in 33 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has granted a permit to an American hunter to import a black rhino trophy from Africa.
The move certainly set a precedent for importing endangered species trophies (it’s the first time any endangered species trophy has been allowed into the states) and has stirred up controversy about whether or not killing an endangered species can help save them.
Rhino horn madness: over two rhinos killed a day in South Africa
Read more at Rhino poachers have killed 232 rhinos during 2013 so far in South Africa, reportsAnnamiticus, which averages out to 2.1 a day. The country has become a flashpoint for rhino poaching as it holds more rhinos than any other country on Earth. Rhinos are being slaughter for their horns, which are believed to be a curative in Chinese traditional medicine, although there is no evidence this is so. Last year, South Africa lost 668 rhinos to poachers, according to the Department of Environmental Affairs. Most of the rhinos killed are white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum), which are currently listed by the IUCN Red List as Near Threatened. The other four rhino species are more endangered: the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is listed as Vulnerable, while the black, Javan, and Sumatran are all listed as Critically Endangered. The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is down to just 100 individuals, while the Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) is down to about 60.
Sumatran rhino population plunges, down to 100 animals
Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos survive in the world today, according to a bleak new population estimate by experts. The last survey in 2008 estimated that around 250 Sumatran rhinos survived, but that estimate now appears optimistic and has been slashed by 60 percent. However conservationists are responding with a major new agreement between the Indonesian and Malaysian governments at a recent summit by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC). The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is found in small, fragmented populations on the islands of Sumatra (Indonesia) and Borneo (Malaysia), as well as a recently identified individual or group in Indonesian Borneo. The world's smallest and hairiest rhino, the Sumatran is believed to be possibly related to the extinct woolly rhinoceros, having been around for around for 20 million years. Has WWF just condemned the last rhino in Kalimantan? WWF-Indonesia recently caught the attention of the global media with their announcement that the Sumatran rhinoceros still exists in Indonesian Borneo, some 40 years after being declared extinct there. This sounds like great news for biodiversity conservation. But is it really? Sumatran rhinos were once wide-spread in South-East Asia, but poaching for their horn decimated populations. In Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, there had been no reliable records of the species since the 1970s, although there were rumors of their continued existence at least until the mid-1990s (Meijaard, 1996). |
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