![]() ![]() It's like, 'I'm so wealthy I can grind up the rhino horn I can afford to buy. Or they grind it up and mix it with rice wine to share with dinner guests, or even snort it. Three of these are critically endangered the. ![]() Earlier this year, the director of Save the Rhino International said having rhino horns has become as much a status symbol in Vietnam as a sports car: "These businessmen have a rhino horn on the hearth to show how successful they are. Indian rhino (also known as the greater one-horned rhino) White rhino Black rhino Javan rhino Sumatran rhino. A 2012 report estimated illegal wildlife trade was worth $12 billion, and efforts to dissuade rich buyers from funding the industry have so far fallen flat. The fact remains, poachers are willing to risk their lives for goods that remain in high demand in parts of Asia. Numerous conservation efforts have been trialled to combat the problem, from controversially auctioning permits to kill the endangered species to raise conservation funds, to using armies to stop poachers crossing borders, and even launching surveillance drones. Numbers have plummeted since the start of the 20th Century, when there were around 500,000 of the species throughout Asia and Africa. Poaching has been the main reason behind the rapid decline of the species, with 1,215 rhinos killed in South Africa alone in 2014. "This will be a foundation that future researchers can utilise and could possibly help bring the three currently extinct black rhinoceros subspecies back into existence." "We intend to use this project as a catalyst to sequence all subspecies of black rhino and understand the genetic divergence within and between rhino species," writes the team, headed up by co-director of the University of Washington's Institute of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Chuck Murray. The hope is that sequencing Ntombi's genome will not only provide incredible insights into the ancient animal's history and help identify what makes it susceptible to disease - so ensuring conservation efforts beyond countering poaching are effective - but that the data could be used to create a "biobank" that will be used to understand the genomes of all eight subspecies. The young rhino could end up being the salvation of her long-deceased cousins there are eight subspecies of black rhino and three of these, the southern black rhino, north-eastern black rhino and western black rhino, are all extinct. ![]() The money will enable the team to use an Illumina HiSeq sequencing kit to map the genetic code of of six-year-old black rhino Ntombi (who is active on social media), one of only around 5,055 black rhinos remaining in the wild. The Red List now contains almost 62,000 species of plants and animals, whose status is constantly monitored by conservationists.The campaign, launched on science funding platform Experiment, which supports open research projects, surpassed its $15,000 goal on 11 July. The Przewalski's horse, a type of wild horse from Central Asia, has come back from extinction after a successful breeding program in captivity. The southern white rhino numbered just 100 animals at the end of the 19th century, but has since flourished and now has a population of over 20,000. "A lack of political support and willpower for conservation efforts in many rhino habitats, international organized crime groups targeting rhinos and increasing illegal demand for rhino horns and commercial poaching are the main threats faced by rhinos," the group said in a statement accompanying the latest update of its so-called Red List of endangered species.Ībout a quarter of all mammals are at risk of extinction, IUCN said, adding that some species have been brought back from the brink with successful conservation programs. The International Union for Conservation of Nature said a recent reassessments of the western black rhino had led it to declare the species extinct, adding that the northern white rhino of central Africa is now "possibly extinct" in the wild and the Javan rhino is "probably extinct" in Vietnam, after poachers killed the last animal there in 2010.Ī small but declining population of the Javan rhino survives on the Indonesian island of Java, it added. The western black rhino of Africa has been declared officially extinct, and two other subspecies of rhinoceros are close to meeting the same fate, a leading conservation group said Thursday. ![]()
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