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#WEST AFRICAN BLACK RHINOCEROS PLUS#
“An adult black rhinoceros stands 52–71 inches high at the shoulder and is 9.2–12 ft in length, plus a tail of about 24 inches in length. Here’s some more information on the very interesting animals, via Wikipedia: Image Credit: Black Rhinoceros Closeup via Wikimedia Commons It would be a shame for the last remaining megafauna of the world to also go extinct, but that appears to the way that things are going. The Americas, incredibly, even had a species of cheetah along with the American lion, the dire wolf, the ice age bison, the American horse, several species of camel, a giant beaver species, etc. Cave lions, hyenas, cave bears, aurochs, several species of rhinoceros, giant elks, mammoths, etc, all inhabited Europe until relatively recently, and died out largely as a result of human influence/habitat destruction. It’s easy for us as westerners to disengage from the environmental destruction occurring in places such as Africa or Asia, or to pass judgement on the people living in these regions, so it’s worth noting that Europe and the Americas were until very recently populated by megafauna very similar to that which currently lives in regions such as Africa. Human populations are continuing to expand at rapid rates all over the world, leading to large-scale deforestation, species extinctions, and in many instances desertification. Which means that the separate populations can not easily interact/breed.Įven if the very high rate of death by poaching were to be significantly reduced (not likely), the problems that accompany very limited genetic diversity are severe… And accompanying the incredible rate of death by poaching, is an ever-continuing loss of habitat.
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And these 4,000 are living in relatively small populations that are completely intersected and separated by human development. The remaining species are of very limited genetic stock and will likely face significant problems because of this, including: inbreeding and the problems that accompany this, increased susceptibility to disease, loss of adaptability to changing environments/climate, etc.Īs recently as 1900, there were still an estimated few hundred thousand or so black rhinos left in the world, today there are only about 4,000 or so. Many of the subspecies are now extinct the Southern Black Rhinoceros, the North-Eastern Black Rhinoceros, the Chobe Black Rhinoceros, and the Western Black Rhinoceros, are all extinct. The species has seen a dramatic drop in population numbers and genetic diversity in recent years. Image Credit: Black Rhino Ngorongoro via Wikimedia Commons Intensive protection measures in southern Africa have brought its numbers back up to about 3,600.The black rhino, also known as the hook-lipped rhinoceros, is a critically endangered species of rhinoceros, that was previously endemic throughout much of Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa, and also to certain regions in West Africa. The continent-wide population numbered about 100,000 in 1900, but declined to 2,400 by 1995. Groups have also been re-established in other countries. Since then captive breeding and protection measures have brought numbers up to nearly 15,000. The southern white rhino reached its lowest point in 1895, with just 30 in one South African game park. The northern white rhino is also critically threatened as it is down to just four in its only remaining habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Colonial hunters picked off the distinctive herbivores as trophies. The numbers of all types of African rhino have plummeted over the past 150 years. The search missions did, however, come across lots of evidence of poaching, There is a lucrative black market trade in rhino horn, which is prized in Asia as an aphrodisiac. "They looked for spoor, they looked for the rhino's characteristic way of feeding which has an effect like a pruning shear, but they didn't find anything to indicate a continued presence in the area," Richard Emslie, scientific officer with the IUCN's species survival commission, told the BBC. Specialists from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) mounted 48 field missions in Cameroon, in which they searched across 1,550 miles. The few left were distributed over a wide area, making breeding more difficult. The western black rhino sub-species, Diceros bicornis longipes, had declined precipitously in the past 20 years largely as a result of poaching. Extensive searches throughout the black rhino's last known habitat in northern Cameroon have failed to find any rhinos or signs of their existence. The West African black rhino appears to have become extinct, according to a leading global conservation group.