NORTHERN WHITE RHINOS - Special forces on mission to save the rhino

The Times Online has news of a former member of the Royal Marines who has authority to shoot to kill in order to stop poachers from killing the last few Northern White Rhino.

TWO years ago Conrad Thorpe was combing the mountains of Afghanistan for terrorists as an officer in the British special forces.

Today he finds himself on the front line of a very different sort of war. He lives in the jungles of the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, battling to stop poachers killing the last few northern white rhino left on the planet.

Lieutenant-Colonel Thorpe, 41, who left the Royal Marines last year after more than a decade in the Special Boat Service, could now be earning at least £1,500 a day on the burgeoning private security circuit in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Full Story at TimesOnline.

In addition, a new taxidermy exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History features a White Rhino exhibit.

The new exhibit is called "Stuffed Animals: The Art and Science of Taxidermy," and it really goes beneath the surface of the mounted mammals and birds that were the institution's backbone after it opened in 1896.
[...]
Visitors can get an up-close look at the lack of detail in a massive white rhinoceros (1901) and compare it to a better-prepared black rhinoceros (circa 1920) also brought out of storage for this display in the Hall of Sculpture.