The reason for their extinction: the excess of hunting to sell their horns on the black market. The black rhino thus joined the long list of creatures, from the Tasmanian tiger to the Arabian gazelle or Grey’s wallaby, that will never set foot on our planet again.
Another rhinoceros, the Central African white rhinoceros ( Ceratotherium simum cottoni ), is also listed as “possibly extinct” on the Red List. And experts warn that the Javan rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros probeicus ) could follow the same path. “For both the western black rhino and the northern white rhino, the situation could have been very different had the suggested conservation measures been applied,” lamented Simon Stuart, Chairman of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.
The organization also indicated that, despite conservation programs, 25% of mammals are currently in danger of extinction .
The data is also good news, as some conservation efforts have already paid off, including those made to protect the white rhino subspecies Ceratotherium simum simum , which has grown from a population of less than 100 at the end of the 19th century, to an estimated wild population of over 20,000. Przewalski’s horse ( Equus ferus ) is another success story that improves its status from “Critically Endangered” to “Endangered”.
With more than 61,000 species examined, the IUCN Red List has become a veritable “barometer of life,” as it was nicknamed by renowned experts in the journal Science in 2010.
Plants are in danger too
While plants are an essential resource for human well-being and a critical component of wildlife habitats, they continue to be under-represented on the IUCN Red List. Current efforts to increase this knowledge include the examination of all conifers . The results until now reveal some worrying tendencies. The Chinese cypress ( Glyptostrobus pensilis ), for example, which previously ranged throughout China and Viet Nam, has gone from Endangered to Critically Endangered. Loss of habitat due to the expansion of agriculture has been the main reason for its decline, and in China there appear to be no remains of wild plants. In Vietnam, very few trees produce viable seeds, which means that this species is on the way to extinction in the wild.
Another example, Taxus contorta , which is used to produce taxol, a chemotherapy drug against cancer, has gone from Vulnerable to Endangered due to overexploitation for medicinal use and uncontrolled harvesting for fuelwood and fodder. Many other tropical plant species are also at risk. Most of the endemic flowering plants of the Seychelles have also been assessed, and current studies show that of the 79 species, 77% are in danger of extinction.
The black rhino in 2016
For the sake of rhino protection, good news: Dvůr Kralové Zoo located in Dvůr Králové nad Labem, in the Czech Republic, was the scene of the birth of two black rhino calves during the month of June . And with these there are already three rhinoceros calves so far in 2016 at this zoo. The two small rhinos are male and weighed about 30 kilograms at birth.
In addition, an eastern black rhinoceros named Eliska (a 3-year-old female) was transferred from the Czech Republic to a nature reserve in Tanzania (Africa) as part of a project for the conservation of endangered animal species.
