Wild Conservation – A Houston Zoo Blog

The Rhino is truly a species on the edge. Zoos, conservation organizations, and field researchers have worked together for many years to help fight for their survival. It is difficult to protect a species whose numbers have plummeted so quickly but when you consider the 25,000 rhinos worldwide are spilt between 5 species, it makes the challenge of recovery all that more daunting.

Two of the world’s five rhinoceros species are found in Africa, the white rhino and the black rhino. Both are victims of illegal hunting, which is done for the sole purpose of obtaining their horns. Rhino horn is used to concoct traditional medicines in Asia and to produce ceremonial dagger handles in certain Middle Eastern countries. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the white rhino was perhaps the most endangered of the five rhino species, having been reduced to only a handful of animals, but its numbers have rebounded incredibly to a population of nearly 17,000, thanks to successful conservation efforts both in captivity and in the wild, and the species is no longer considered endangered. The black rhino, by comparison, has been seriously reduced in numbers to only a few thousand individuals in Africa’s.

In response to the critical situation facing Africa’s black rhino, the Houston Zoo has joined with the International Rhino Foundation to support the return of this species to Botswana, a country in which it used to occur, but from which it has been extirpated. The long-term goal is to eventually translocate animals to protected areas in the Okavango Delta and the Mashatu Game Reserve, as well as support Rhino Protection Units in Zimbabwe to assist this species.

The Houston Zoo has pledged $100,000 to help launch this ambitious project. The funds will be used to repair fences that protect remaining black rhino populations in Zimbabwe and to better equip anti-poaching units in that country.

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