NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – U rhinoceros population Worldwide it has increased slightly, but so have killings, especially in South Africa, as poaching fueled by high demand for rhino horn remains a major threat, conservationists said in a new report.
The number of white rhinos increased from 15,942 in 2022 to 17,464 in 2023, but the larger black rhino remained the same, according to the report published in 2023. International Rhino Foundation ahead of World Rhino Day on Sunday.
Another subspecies, the northern white rhinoceros, it is technically extinct with only two females being held in a secure private conservancy in Kenya, known as Ol Pejeta. A trial is underway develop embryos in the laboratory from an egg and sperm previously collected from white rhinos and the transfer into a surrogate female black rhino.
A total of 586 rhinos were killed in Africa in 2023, most of them in South Africa – which has the highest rhino population at an estimated 16,056. Killings increased from 551 reported in 2022, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
With all five subspecies combined, there are just under 28,000 rhinos in the world, up from 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.
Rhinos face various environmental threats such as habitat loss due to development and climate change, but poaching, based on the belief that their horns have medicinal uses, remains the number one threat.
Philip Muruthi, the vice president for species conservation at the Africa Wildlife Foundation, said that protection has played a major role in increasing the rhino population. In Kenya, their numbers have increased from 380 in 1986 to 1,000 last year, he said. “Why did it happen? Because the rhinos were brought into sanctuaries and were protected.
Muruthi advocates a campaign that ends the demand for rhino horn and the adoption of new technology in tracking and monitoring rhinos for their protection, while also educating the communities where they live about the benefits of rhinos for l ecosystem and the economy.
Known as mega herbivores that cut up parks and create raids for other herbivores, rhinos are also good at establishing forests by ingesting seeds and spreading them across parks in their dung.
Murithi lamented that the northern white rhino – of which there are only two females left in the world – should never have come so close to extinction.
“Don’t do the numbers where it’s very expensive to recover and we’re not even sure it’s going to happen,” he said.
The body of the last male northern white rhino – named Sudan – who died in 2018 has been preserved and displayed at the Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.
A research scientist and curator of mammals at the museum, Bernard Agwanda, said that the preservation of Sudan will tell the story of how the species lived among humans and why conservation is important.
“So we expect the northern white rhino behind us here to live for a century or two so we can tell its story for generations to come,” he said.
___