In Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia you need to be very lucky to see any rhinos. Namibia's Etosha National Park has healthy populations of black rhino. In South Africa, the southern Kruger National Park, as well as the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi game reserve, are two of the best places where you can see white or black rhinoceros. This has caused an escalation of poaching incidents from less than 20 rhinos poached per year between 19, to more than 1,200 rhinos poached during 2014.įortunately, there are still many places where you can see white and black rhinos in the wild. The superstitious belief in parts of Asia that rhino horn has healing properties has driven up the price of rhino horn. It seems that the only reason rhino horn is valued so much is because of a false rumour that a Vietnamese politician's cancer was cured by consuming rhino horn. And the biggest threat to the survival of rhinos is the value of their horns, which at $100,000/kg is now worth more than gold (by weight). Rhinos have no natural enemies in the wild. The death of Sudan placed the spotlight again on rhino conservation, and the desperate plight of the remaining rhino species, all of which are critically endangered. The only remaining hope for this sub-species is in-vitro fertilization using Sudan's preserved sperm. Sadly, the old male Sudan died in 2018 at a conservancy in Kenya. Scientists tried unsuccessfully to get these last three individuals to breed. Until 2018, only three individual northern white rhinos remained alive, in captivity. The northern white rhino is a subspecies of the white rhino or square-lipped rhino that used to be common in central and east Africa but has been hunted and poached to extinction in the wild.
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