![]() ![]() That was the last time scientists or conservationists ever saw a western black rhino. ![]() A WWF survey in 2001 found just five surviving western black rhinos, with the possibility of three additional, unconfirmed individuals. The report concluded that the lack of local conservation capacity and government commitment would make any effort to rescue the last rhinos extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, and that the western black rhinoceros was indeed functionally extinct. The provision of a safe habitat for just 20 rhinos would require the fencing of a sanctuary four hundred square km in size. Cameroon was then plagued by corruption and civil unrest. The report laid out the insurmountable challenge in preserving these final 10 western black rhinos that seemed demographically and genetically doomed. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) published a report called “African Rhino: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan.” In 1999. There was hope that they would find one another and start breeding but this was not likely. There was an average of 60 km between each animal. Four of them lived in fairly close proximity to one another. The last 10 western black rhinos were scattered across 25,000 square km of northern Cameroon. By 1997 the population had fallen to an estimated 10 last rhinos. Cameroon still had an estimated 50 western black rhinos in 1991. Chad’s western black rhinoceros were wiped out within 10 years. The western black rhino was the hardest hit as it had already been weakened by decades of overhunting.īy 1980 this rhino’s range had shrunk to just Cameroon, which held 110 of the animals, and Chad, where just 25 remained. ![]() Between 19 a devastating 98 percent of black rhinos were killed by poachers to feed the new and voracious demand for rhino horns to be used in traditional Chinese medicine, for ceremonial knife handles and other ornaments made from rhino horn. Poachers descended on Africa in their hundreds. You name it, traditional Chinese medicine cured it. Although he did not actually believe in it himself, the Chinese political propaganda machine promoted these remedies as a panacea. The then Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong popularised traditional Chinese medicine as a political ploy. The events that sealed this beautiful animal’s demise began in the early 1950s. Farmers and ranchers at the time viewed large herbivores such as the rhino as a pest and a threat to their crops. Numerous historic rhino habitats were cleared for crops and settlements. Wholesale sports hunting in the first decades of the nineteenth century quickly decimated the rhino populations. Historically, the western black rhinoceros had a range across central and western Africa, with populations in modern-day Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan. Poaching for the rhino horn trade continues to plague this species. There have been some conservation successes and the black rhino population in Africa is today around 5,200 found in pockets of habitat in Central to South Africa. This is the story of how we exterminated one of those subspecies, the western black rhinoceros. By 2001 that number had dropped to about 2,300 black rhinos and just three subspecies. An estimated one million black rhinoceros from four different subspecies roamed the savannas of Africa in 1900. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |