![]() ![]() In Africa, where rhinos are distributed across vast savannas and often occupy unprotected or poorly protected lands, demand for rhino horn is the primary threat. Over the long term, habitat loss has been the main culprit, but as their numbers have dwindled, threats to individual populations have diverged. The pressures driving the demise of rhinos are relentless. It, too, eventually succumbed to poaching. Meanwhile the western black rhino, a sub-species of black rhino, was declared extinct in 2011. South Africa, home to more than 70 percent of the world’s wild rhinos, lost 448 to poachers last year, a new record. Surging horn prices, boosted by booming middle class demand in Vietnam and China, have reinvigorated the mass slaughter of rhinos. The outlook in Africa - home to three species of rhinos, totaling 20,000 individuals - is only slightly brighter. Experts put the likelihood for survival of either species at 50 percent. rhino’s closest relative, the Sumatran rhino in Sumatra and Borneo, also has a tenuous hold, with fewer than 275 believed to exist in the wild. The JavanĪ Javan rhino in Vietnam, part of a population that is now extinct. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) rates three of the five remaining species of rhino critically endangered, only one step away from extinction. The Javan rhino is not alone in its plight. The poacher got his prize: the rhino’s horn, which in the traditional Chinese medicine market is worth $65,000 per kilogram, more than gold. But the Javan rhino in Vietnam was eliminated when poachers gunned down the only individual left in Cat Tien National Park. ![]() A second population of Javan rhinos hung on in Vietnam, a remnant of a species that once ranged widely across Asia. Until two years ago, that wasn’t the case. This patch of rainforest and swamp in Ujung Kulon National Park, on the very tip of West Java in Indonesia, is their last and only refuge. This is the first sign of one of the planet’s rarest animals - the Javan rhino. The elite rangers, dressed in black despite the tropical heat, mark the site with a GPS unit, measure the mucky puddle’s depth, and move on. Trekking through deep mud and sawgrass we find a stinking wallow. ![]()
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