David_42
Registered Democrat.
- Aug 9, 2015
- 3,616
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It's very sad, but I can't say I didn't see this coming.. More evidence of the sixth great extinction..
Sumatran rhinos likely to become extinct, conservationists warn
Sumatran rhinos likely to become extinct, conservationists warn
Earth’s last remaining Sumatran rhinos are edging perilously close to extinction, according to one of the world’s top conservation bodies.
There are fewer than 100 of the animals left in the rainforests of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Kalimantan province of Borneo. The last Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in Malaysia was spotted two years ago in the Sabah region of Borneo but experts last month declared the species extinct in that country.
That has prompted the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to sound the alarm over the species’ fate, which it said is headed for extinction if urgent action is not taken.
“It takes the rhino down to a single country,” said Simon Stuart, chair of the IUCN’s species survival commission. “With the ongoing poaching crisis, escalating population decline and destruction of suitable habitat, extinction of the Sumatran rhino in the near future is becoming increasingly likely.”
The rhino is the smallest of the three Asian rhino species – there are also just 57 Javan rhinos (Rhinoceros sondaicus) and more than 3,000 Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis). The population of the Sumatran species is believed to have halved in the last decade.
The last official assessment in 2008 put their number at about 250 but Stuart said, with hindsight, the true number then had probably been about 200. Poachers kill the rhinos for their horn, which is even more valuable than that of African rhinos.