The West African black rhino is now extinct
DaisyBumbleroot
Posts: 24,763 Forum Member
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15663982
This saddens me so much. There has been so much awareness and campainging and attempts to save the rhino, but its now extinct in its natural habitat in West Africa.
The white rhino is on the verge and the Javan rhino is "believed to have dissappeared" as well.
This saddens me so much. There has been so much awareness and campainging and attempts to save the rhino, but its now extinct in its natural habitat in West Africa.
The white rhino is on the verge and the Javan rhino is "believed to have dissappeared" as well.
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Comments
I know
What are we doing to our home?
But rhionos dont, didnt, live in China, so they needed to be poached from somewhere.
But hair-splitting aside, I agree. It's sad to see such a magnificent animal pointlessly poached to the point where it's only proof of existence is seeing it in some pen somewhere.
Luckily the Southern white rhino has made a fantastic comeback after being on the brink of extinction (around 50 left) at the start of the 20th Century, there's over 17,000 of them.
The Black Rhino isn't doing so well, there's estimated to be around 4,500 left.
Sad that this happens in this day and age. The people who pay for rhino horns and all that sort of stuff should have their noses chopped off and see how they like it.
And if breeding programmes fail, once they die, our childrens children will only ever be able to see them on TV or look at pictures in books.
Unfortunately it's all been tried and failed; when rich people are offering them bags of money, poachers just don't care.
The only real successes they've had against them is in the heavily guarded reserves where they're simply shot dead on sight.
We, as humans, just help matters along in many cases.
Maybe one day security measures can be put in place so these animals can also be reintroduced into their natural habitat.
Since the creation of the earth, how many species have come into existence, but are now extinct? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? More likely millions. Does it really matter if one more becomes extinct?
Look on the bright side : at least their poaching will stop.
Which is how the vast majority of people see them at the moment, I imagine.
The Japanese hunt whales and dolphins and call it SCIENTIFIC research...
The Yangzee river dolphin disappeared (believed to be extinct) - all because they wanted to build a dam - lots of people were kicked out of their homes, villages were lost. But this was done in the name of progress......
Like Crocodile Dundee says --- you should only kill what you are going to eat!
We eat cows, sheep, chickens, turkeys, etc....... Unless you are an Inuit - there is no need to eat seal, whale, etc.....
It has allways puzzled me how rhino horn is an ingrediant in traditional Chinese medicine when the Rhino has never been indigiounous to china
There are 3 different types of Rhino in Asia:
The Indian Rhino
The Sumatran Rhino and the
Javan Rhino
Kill you, if you get too close and piss them off.
They are one of those animals to stay well clear of, as they can easily outrun humans.
That doesn't obviously justify killing them, of course. However, they can be dangerous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
Yes; I'm no huge fan of zoos, but you have to acknowledge that they're increasingly playing a part in protecting endangered species and carrying out very good breeding programmes.
I was at Twycross not long ago, and they done wonders with some of the rarer monkeys who they previously struggled to get to breed in captivity. Unfortunately for a lot of the primate species, they're indirectly being driven to extinction when the rainforest and jungles are being chopped down.
Sometimes I think a 20 year moratorium on rainforest 'development' would allow so many endangered species to repair themselves.
As for the bigger animals, the only real option is to go for the types of nature reserves they have in Kenya with well-trained armed guards on patrol and electric fencing etc. to deal with the poachers. But if they want to kill a rare animal enough, they'll find a way. I'm not sure what the long term answer is to be honest.