NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The rhino population Globally, rhino horn numbers have increased slightly, but so have the number of deaths, particularly in South Africa. Poaching, fueled by the huge demand for rhino horn, remains a major threat, conservationists say in a new report.
The number of white rhinos has increased from 15,942 in 2022 to 17,464 in 2023, but the number of black and greater one-horned rhinos has remained the same, according to the report published by the International Rhino Foundation on the occasion of World Rhino Day on Sunday.
Another subspecies, the northern white rhinoceros, is technically extinct, with only two females kept in a secure private reserve in Kenya known as Ol Pejeta. A trial is underway to embryos develop in the laboratory from an egg and sperm previously collected from white rhinos and transferred to a surrogate mother, a female black rhino.
A total of 586 rhinos were killed in Africa in 2023, most of them in South Africa, which has the largest population of rhinos with an estimated 16,056. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the number of deaths has risen from 551 in 2022.
If we add all five subspecies together, there are just under 28,000 rhinos left worldwide, compared to 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.
Rhinos face several environmental threats, including habitat loss due to development and climate change. But poaching, based on the belief that their horns have medicinal uses, remains the biggest threat.
Philip Muruthi, vice president for species conservation at the Africa Wildlife Foundation, said conservation has played a major role in the growth of the rhino population. In Kenya, Their numbers rose from 380 in 1986 to 1,000 last year, he said. “Why did that happen? Because the rhinos were put in reserves and protected.”
Muruthi advocates for a campaign to end the demand for rhino horn and to use new technologies to track and monitor rhinos so that they can be protected, while educating rhino communities about the benefits of rhinos to the ecosystem and economy.
Rhinos are known as megaherbivores that mow parks to create space for other herbivores. They are also good at creating forests by eating seeds and spreading them through the parks in their dung.
Murithi lamented that the northern white rhino, of which there are only two females left in the world, could never have come so close to the brink of extinction.
“The numbers are not so high that it is very expensive to recover and we are not even sure it will happen,” he said.
The body of the last male northern white rhino, named Sudan, who died in 2018, has been preserved and put on display in Kenya’s museums in Nairobi.
Bernard Agwanda, researcher and curator of mammals at the museum, said conserving the Sudan will tell the story of how the species lived among humans and why conservation is important.
“So we expect that the northern white rhino that lives behind us will live for another century or two, so that it can tell its story for generations to come,” he said.
___