#WESTERN BLACK RHINOCEROS LAST SEEN UPDATE#

Photo: Western black rhino skull from 1911, via Wikipedia That's still way below the previous high of 550 in the 1990s, but for a species that was once thought to be extinct, it's an improvement. There are now 240 of the animals, up 12 percent from 214 in 2010. Well luckily, the squirrel had a good year even without the investment. Speaking of species that cost a lot to conserve, last year I reported on a cancelled $1.25 million plan to help protect the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel ( Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis). It is not yet known how the toxins are affecting the polar bears. Like other apex predators, polar bears eat animals that have eaten other animals, allowing toxins to accumulate as they climb up the food chain. In other polar bear news, a study of the animals in Greenland found that they were carrying a 'cocktail of environmental toxins' in their bones and tissues. The most vocal voices against this declaration come from Canada's Inuit communities, which have so far maintained their traditional rights to hunt polar bears. This doesn't actually add any protections for polar bears, which face tough conditions due to climate change, but it does require the Canadian government to come up with a comprehensive species management plan within three years. The Canadian Environment Minister has named polar bears ( Ursus maritimus) a 'species of special concern' under the country's Species at Risk Act. With that news out of the way, let's catch up on some other species recently covered in Extinction Countdown:Ĭanada's Polar Bears Inch Toward Protection ( See my story from two weeks ago for the status of all other rhino species and subspecies.) How many more can we expect in the coming years?īy the way, the remaining rhino species in Africa and Asia remain under threat, as poaching is now at an all-time high this year, already beating last year's previous record.

So there we have it: two rhino extinction announcements in the course of a month. The IUCN declared the western black rhino 'likely extinct' in 2006 all attempts to find them since then have proved fruitless, and conservationists have now given up any hope of finding the animals alive. An adult weighs from 800 to 1400 kilograms (1,760 to 3,080 pounds), some may weigh 1820 kilograms (4,000 pounds), with the females being smaller than the males. After decades of heavy poaching and weak protection, the species was last seen in 2000 in Cameroon-a country known for its violence and corruption-at which time the last 10 or so individuals in this subspecies were thought to be too spread out to find each other and breed. An adult Black Rhinoceros stands 140 170 centimetres (57.9 63 inches) high at the shoulder and is 3.3 3.6 metres (10.8 11.8 feet) in length. The loss of the western black rhino was, sadly, expected.

#WESTERN BLACK RHINOCEROS LAST SEEN UPDATE#

The declaration came last week from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as part of the latest update to its Red List of Threatened Species, which tracks the conservation status of endangered animals and plants around the world. Just two weeks after the World Wildlife Fund declared the Vietnam Javan rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) extinct comes the announcement of another rhino extinction, this time the western black rhino ( Diceros bicornis longipes) of Africa.

Western black rhinoceros last seen