A decade of success in African Rhino conservation

There is hope...
“Rhino conservation in Africa is going from strength to strength,” said Dr Susan Lieberman, Director of WWF’s Global Species Programme. “Thanks to strategic conservation measures, heightened anti-poaching interventions, and cooperative efforts to ensure that local communities benefit from these conservation efforts, many African rhino populations are on the mend.”

...but there is still work to do
Delegates attending the meeting of the CITES convention in June 2007 called for better cross-border collaboration between countries along smuggling routes for rhino horn and products to better protect the species, which appears to be facing an upsurge in poaching.

The black rhinoceros has four subspecies, of which three (Diceros bicornis bicornis, D.b. Michaeli and D.b. longipes) are listed as “Critically Endangered” in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Africa clebrates return of the rhino

WWF's Africa Rhino Programme (ARP) was unveiled in 1997, when black rhino populations were at less than 3000 and falling in just a fraction of their former range. Now IUCN calculates populations of both black and white rhinos are growing healthily and the ARP is looking to re-introduce rhinos to more of the areas from which they have disappeared.

• Africa's woodlands and savannahs once teemed with more than a million black and white rhinos, but populations were decimated after a century and a half of depradations by European game hunters and by poachers supplying markets for rhino horn dagger handles and supposed medicinal ingredients.  One sub-species of black rhino is thought extinct and only a few individuals of northern white rhino remain.  The southern white rhino was thought extinct until the chance discovery of a remnant population in the late 19th century but has now come back from the brink.  Black rhinos numbers continued to decline through to the 1990s, despite bans on trade in rhino horn products and a "critically endangered" listing from IUCN.
• In 1997, there were 8,466 white rhinos and 2,599 black rhinos remaining in the wild. Today, there are 14,500 white rhinos and nearly 4,000 of the more endangered black rhinos.
• The species’ decline has been stopped through effective monitoring and increased security - and the engagement and commitment of communities and governments.
• According to the African Rhino Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, Africa’s white and black rhino numbers have shown annual growth rates of 6.8% and 4.5%, respectively, since 1995.
• While taking stock and celebrating its many successes, the ARP is aware that much still needs to be done to secure a future for Africa’s rhinos. Of note is the growing realisation and awareness that the programmed can only achieve ambitious targets if governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector and local communities work together.