Latest Save the Rhino Stories
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following a recent surge in museum heists targeting rhinoceros horn, conservation and preservation organizations warn that the illegal trafficking of art and wildlife is a threat to the public, as well as the world's natural and cultural heritage. The Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Save the Rhino International, and Saving Rhinos issued the following...
A growing black-market demand for rhino horns is driving a profitable new wave of high-tech poaching that threatens the fight to save the rhinoceros from extinction. The heart of the crisis lies in South Africa, where nearly one rhinoceros per day was lost to poaching this year alone. Conservationists fear the issue could run over into other regions, pushed by a surge in the demand for the horn in Asia, most notably in Vietnam, where it is used as a traditional medicine and can sell for tens...
South Africa on Tuesday launched a new wildlife crime unit that will take rhino poaching head on in an attempt to stop the dramatic surge of senseless killings for the animal's horn that is sold for use in traditional medicines. Rhino poaching has climbed in South Africa this year, with 227 rhinos slaughtered so far, almost double the 122 killed in all of last year. A two-day rhino summit meeting was assembled on Tuesday by Environment Minister Buyelwa Sonjica to get wildlife experts and...
A rise in poaching in Zimbabwe has raised concern among conservationists for the survival of endangered rhinos in the region.Raoul du Toit, head of southern Zimbabwe's Lowveld Rhino Trust, told the Associated Press that the rhinos are sought after by gangs who sell their horns to be used for traditional medicine in Asia and ceremonial dagger handles in the Middle East.Established in 1991 under the provision of the World Wildlife Fund, the Lowveld Rhino Trust (LRT) has worked to increase the...
Poachers' Greed Undermining Economic Recovery YULEE, Fla., April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading rhino conservation experts, the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) and Save the Rhino, today called the rhino poaching situation in Zimbabwe "an immediate crisis with long-term consequences" and called for concerted action by the Zimbabwe government and international agencies to tackle endangered species poaching and illegal trade in wildlife products. The groups said continued inaction...
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported Tuesday that Africa's northern white rhino is on the brink of extinction. Although the continent's total number rhinos has reached record levels in recent years, the northern white sub-species is now confined only to the remote, lawless region of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Garamba National Park.  The number of northern white rhinos has now dwindled from just 30 in April 2003 to merely four as of...
