Five of the few northern white rhinos left in the wild will be flown from Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent poachers wiping them out, conservationists said on Saturday.Full story continues
Fewer than 10 of the rhinos are believed to remain and with heavily armed poachers carrying out frequent raids in the wilds of northeastern Congo, moving the beasts to sanctuary in Kenya is deemed the only option to guarantee their survival.
'Although we've all been against the idea of the rhinos going elsewhere it is now necessary,' said Kes Hillman Smith, head of monitoring at Congo's Garamba National Park after the government approved the move this week.
TEN! TEN! Damn them!
With the ten in zoos in US and Czech Republic, that makes 20 or less left on the planet. Put that in perspective...
I have more coins in my wallet right now!
7 comments:
I had a stupid thought the other week, probably on par with my idea of periodically removing rhino horns and elephant tusks from living (but sedated) animals to elimanate their value to poachers. And that was this: why not relocate herds of the far-more-common Southern White Rhinos to the outskirts of Garamba, and keep the on-the-brink Northern White Rhinos in a more protected center? 19th-century gardening texts suggested planting soybeans on the perimeter of a vegeatable garden because these would be preferentially attacked by rabbits, who would then ignore the other vegetables in the center of the garden.
But at this point, there's no time to screw around with such half-baked ideas. Even the best-thought-out plans may be too late. It seems that the Northen White Rhino is going the way of the Baiji Dolphin.
Damn them.
I think the problem with that is it would really only make the extinction of the southern white rhino much faster.
The rabbits in the vegetable gardens get full, proachers don't.
-Ed-
[QUOTE]The minimum number of rhinos spotted in park surveys has plummeted from 30 in April 2003 to just four at the end of last year. Nine, including a pregnant female and a young calf, were found dead in 2004.[/QUOTE]
Damn them...
~Bistro
Can they do artificial insemination on them to help with breeding?
Actually yes, a German team did have some success in this area last year.
Check out this post.
Re: removing the horns and tusks.. it doesn't work. Zimbabwe did this in the 90's (I saw a few of those silly looking rinos) and all that happens is that the poachers kill them anyways so that they don't have to track down these "worthless" animals again.
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