The rhino population around the world has increased slightly but so have the killings, mostly in South Africa, as poaching fed by huge demand for rhino horns remains a top threat, conservationists said in a recent report.
The number of white rhinos increased from 15,942 in 2022 to 17,464 in 2023, but numbers of the black and greater one-horned rhino stayed the same, according to the report published by the International Rhino Foundation ahead of World Rhino Day, observed each year on September 22.
Another subspecies, the northern white rhino, is technically extinct with only two females being kept in a secure private conservancy in Kenya, known as Ol Pejeta. A trial is ongoing to develop embryos in the lab from an egg and sperm previously collected from white rhinos for transferring into a surrogate female black rhino.
A total of 586 rhinos were killed in Africa in 2023, most of them in South Africa — which has the highest population of rhinos at an estimated 16,056. The killings increased from 551 reported in 2022, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
With all five subspecies combined, there are just under 28,000 rhinos left in the world, from 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.
Poaching is top threat
Rhinos face various environmental threats like habitat loss due to development and climate change, but poaching, based on the belief that their horns have medicinal uses, remains the top threat.
Philip Muruthi, the vice president for species conservation at the Africa Wildlife Foundation, said protection has played a big role in increasing rhino population. In Kenya, their numbers rose from 380 in 1986 to 1,000 last year, he said. "Why has that happened? Because the rhinos were brought into sanctuaries and were protected."
Muruthi advocates for a campaign that will end the demand for rhino horn as well as adoption of new technology in tracking and monitoring rhinos for their protection while also educating communities where they live on the benefits of rhinos to the ecosystem and the economy.
Known as mega herbivores that mow the parks and create inroads for other herbivores, rhinos are also good for establishing forests by ingesting seeds and spreading them across the parks in their dung.
Murithi lamented that the northern white rhino should have never gotten so close to the brink of extinction.
"Don't get the numbers to where it's very expensive to recover and we are not even sure that it will happen," he said.
The body of the last male northern white rhino – named Sudan – that died in 2018 has been preserved and displayed at the Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.
A research scientist and curator of mammals at the museum, Bernard Agwanda, said preserving Sudan will tell the story of how the species lived among humans and why conservation is important.
"So we expect that the northern white rhino behind us here is going to live for one or two centuries to be able to tell its story for generations to come," he said.
