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Save the Rhino Trust
Julia Nesbitt
For more than 20 years, the Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) has worked ceaselessly to protect the last free-ranging desert-adapted black rhino population on Earth. In the remote and rugged Palmwag Concession, near the Northwestern coast of Namibia, teams of local trackers use camel trains to help in researching and monitoring this gravely endangered animal. SRT is funded by the UK based non-profit Save the Rhino, which works to conserve viable populations of critically endangered rhinos in Africa and Asia.
The history of the rhinoceros is a tragic one. At the turn of the 19th century, there were approximately one million rhinos. Today, there are fewer than 18,000 rhinos surviving in the wild. White and black rhinos are found in Africa and the Indian, Javan and Sumatran rhinos complete the five species. All except the white rhino are Critically Endangered as defined by the World Conservation Union and are facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. The desert- adapted black rhino found in Namibia is an extremely rare sub-species which lives in the inhospitable deserts, and so is difficult to track.
Unfortunately poachers kill rhinos for the price they can get for the horns (used for traditional Chinese medicine, for ornamental dagger handles in Yemen as well as hunting trophies on the black market). Humans are also responsible for land encroachment, illegal logging and pollution which are destroying the rhinos habitat; and political conflicts adversely affect conservation programs.
There is good news too; conservation efforts can do save species. The Southern white rhino would not exist today if it were not for the work of a few determined people, who brought together the 200 or so individuals surviving, for a managed breeding and re-introduction program. Today, there are some 11,100 Southern white rhinos. The success of the Southern white rhino is a joyful motivator to continue to protect the black rhinoceros before this remarkable giant goes the way of the dodo before.
Sources: www.savetherhino.org and www.wikipedia.com
