In September, the International Rhino Foundation released its annual report, The 2021 State of the Rhino, which analyses population sizes, trends, and key challenges for five rhino species in Africa and Asia.
Greater one-horned rhinos
The great one-horned rhinoceros is found in India and Nepal. At present, the wild population of large one-horned rhinos exceeds 3700 heads, and it is on the rise and is vulnerable.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the wild population of large one-horned rhinos was once less than 100; today, the number of large one-horned rhinos in the wild has exceeded 3,700. This is due to strict protection in India and Nepal, which has led to a decline in poaching for many years. India's state of Assam is the region with the largest population of large one-horned rhinos; in 2020, only 2 large one-horned rhinos were hunted in the region.
India Rhino Vision 2020 (IRV2020) ended its final operation earlier this year to move two rhinos from the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary to Manas National Park. The goal of The Indian Rhino Vision 2020 is to increase the number of rhinos in Assam to 3,000 by establishing populations in new areas. The program successfully re-established a new population in Manas National Park, which now has 47 individuals. Rhinos can now be seen in four protected areas in Assam: Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, Orang National Park, Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park.
Building on The Indian Rhino Vision 2020, governments, non-profit organizations and a coalition of community partners, including the International Rhino Foundation, are developing a new strategic plan for Rhino India to increase their number to 4,500 over the next decade. The plan will be released later this year.
Nepal has completed a new nationwide census of large one-horned rhinos, which now numbers at 752, an increase of 107 from the last survey in 2015. Chitwan National Park is home to Nepal's largest rhino population, and the number of naturally dead rhinos has increased over the past few years, which is worrying. And in 2020, Chitwan had four rhinos poached for the first time in nearly four years.
Conservation remains a key focus for population growth. In addition, habitat management, including the removal of invasive species and the creation of new suitable areas, is necessary to increase food resources and the overall health of rhinos.
Javan rhinos
There are currently 75 Javan rhinos living in Indonesia's Ujung Kulon National Park, with stable populations and critically endangered populations.
Wow rhinos are only found in Indonesia's Ujung Kulon National Park (UKNP), where populations seem to be growing slowly. Every year since 2012, at least one new baby rhino is born. Since 2021, 4 Javan rhinos have been born, offsetting natural deaths of Javan rhinos, and their total herd has risen to 75.
Ujung Kulon National Park has implemented a comprehensive rhino monitoring programme that tracks every Javan rhino. The monitoring programme, supported by the International Rhino Foundation and the Indonesian Rhino Foundation (YABI), has played a key role in the conservation and management of this species and provides demographic data on the Javan rhino population in the park that can be used for population management. Over time, the data will also guide decisions about which rhinos to move to a second site to reduce the species' risk of extinction and allow the population to grow further.
The safety of the Javan rhino is the responsibility of the Rhino Conservation Group, operated by the Indonesian Rhino Foundation in partnership with Ujung Kulon National Park. In response to the potential threat of illegal fishing throughout the park, the Indonesian Rhino Foundation and Ujung Kulon National Park launched two marine rhino conservation groups in January 2020. During the first year of operations, marine conservation teams arrested 220 people who fished illegally and encroached on the waters of Ujung Kulon National Park.
For Javan rhinos, it is important to supplement their food with salt, so they have been found on the beaches of the national park many times in history. But in recent years, as more and more illegal fishermen build fishing platforms in the northern part of the peninsula, rhinoceros has become less and less common. Instead, they have to travel farther inland to find plants that contain enough salt.
Now that marine conservation groups are effectively stopping illegal fishermen, hopes are that more rhinos will return to the beach. This year, the marine conservation team's hard work paid off, with a rare sight of a Javan rhinoceros on the beach and videotaping it.
Expanding the habitat of the Javan rhino is a priority to ensure continued population growth. In 2010, the Indonesian government established an additional 5,100-hectare area in Ujung Kulon National Park called the Javan Rhino Research and Conservation Area to expand the available habitat for rhinos. Rhinos move in search of food sources and mates, and if they have both, they settle in new areas. Scientists hope rhinos can take advantage of the new reserve as soon as possible.
Arenga palm (Arenga obtusifolia) is a fast-growing dominant plant species. It kills other native plant species within the national park, including the food plants that rhinos prefer. In 2020, the International Rhino Foundation, along with the Indonesian Rhino Foundation and the authorities of Ujung Kulon National Park, continued its plan to control The Arenga Palm, hiring local workers to manually remove it. Manual logging is hard, but the noise is very small, so the disturbance to rhinos is also relatively small. This habitat restoration effort opens up new pathways for Javan rhinos and allows the regeneration of preferred food plants.
Sumatran rhinos
Currently, the Sumatran rhino in the wild population is less than 80 and is critically endangered.
In 2018, a pioneering project, Sumatran Rhino Rescue (SRR), was formed to support the Indonesian government's emergency action plan to save Sumatra rhinos. Indonesian officials work with local and international organizations to capture Sumatran rhinos and relocate them to conservation breeding facilities such as the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary, established in 1995 by the International Rhino Foundation and the Indonesian Rhino Foundation, with the goal of rapidly and safely increasing rhino populations, creating a source population that could eventually reintroduce animals into the wild.
Before that, the location of wild rhinos must be determined for capture and transfer. Last year, survey teams were set up in three areas known to have rhino populations. Sumatra's Way Kambas and Gunung Leuser National Parks, as well as The Province of East Kalimantan, a province on the island of Borneo, where a lone rhinoceros was spotted. Six individuals are currently being tracked in these three regions, with the hope of starting to capture by the end of 2021. A new Sumatran rhino reserve is being built in Leuser to promote conservation breeding in the area.
The capture team, which included veterinarians, transport specialists and other experts, conducted face-to-face training before the pandemic, but recent training had to be conducted virtually. Local and international experts participated in the training, sharing best practices for safely capturing and moving rhinos.
Communities in Indonesia are facing increasing health and economic challenges due to the impact of the global pandemic. As a result, there are concerns about poaching rhinos and other wildlife. However, conservation and monitoring efforts should continue, and at this time, they should be strengthened to ensure the survival of this species. The Rhino Protection Unit is already in place and additional security facilities, including cameras, are being installed and upgraded to meet these needs.
Despite protection and monitoring, habitat loss and population isolation have made it difficult for rhinos to find each other and reproduce, and this population continues to decline.
White rhinos
At present, the wild population of white rhinos is about 17212-18915 heads, and the number is declining, and it is in imminent danger.
There are two extant subspecies of the white rhinoceros, the northern white rhino and the southern white rhinoceros. In 2018, the northern white subspecies was officially declared extinct in the wild. Today, the only two remaining northern white rhinos in the world are two females in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Reserve. To date, reproductive scientists have harvested, fertilized and frozen 12 egg cells using eggs harvested from living female rhinos and frozen semen samples from deceased northern white rhinos. The International Rhino Foundation is excited about this important step of assisted reproductive technology, but since the technology is still in its infancy, there is still a long way to go to create a calf for a northern white rhino through the technology.
The IUCN's African Rhino Specialist Group (AfRSG) currently has an official estimate of the Southern White Rhino population remains around 18,000, meaning the species has declined by 12 percent over the past decade. In February 2021, South Africa's National Parks released a report showing that the total number of white rhinos in Kruger National Park — which has plummeted from about 10,621 in 2011 to just 3,549 in 2019, a 67 percent drop. The white rhinos in Kruger National Park were once considered the largest white rhino population in the world.
Some experts estimate that the sharp decline in white rhino numbers in Kruger National Park has reduced the number of white rhinos on the continent to nearly 15,500. If this is accurate, it actually represents a 24% decline in the species over the past decade.
White rhino poaching is on the rise again. South Africa reported poaching in the first half of 2021 being higher than last year, but still lower than in the same period in 2019. Authorities also noted an upward trend in poaching figures in other parts of the country.
Elsewhere in Africa, Botswana continues to face severe poaching pressure on black and white rhinos, leading to a dangerous decline in its populations. Under the control of an organized criminal network spanning four countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Namibia and Botswana, rhino horn was smuggled into The Vietnamese market.
The Botswana government is taking steps to address the current crisis, including moving rhinos to safer places. In Zambia, efforts are also under way to disrupt trade routes and intercept the transport of rhino horns. Across Africa, the International Rhino Foundation has provided more than $8 million in grants over the past decade to carefully selected parks and NGOs to enhance safety and anti-poaching efforts in key rhino populations, as well as reduce demand for rhino horn in consumer countries and shut down illicit trade networks.
Black rhinos
At present, the number of black rhinos in the wild is about 5366-5630 heads, and the population is rising and is extremely dangerous.
Black rhinos have been recovering from devastating poaching losses since the 1970s. The number of black rhinos has increased by 16-17% over the past decade, which is encouraging. There are three subspecies of black rhinos, namely the southeastern black rhinoceros, the eastern black rhino and the southwestern black rhino. The number of all of these subspecies has increased, with the eastern black rhinoceros having seen the largest increase (33-42%) in the past decade. Last year, as the population of the Southwest black rhino continued to grow over the past three generations, the African Rhino Expert Group reduced the endangerment level of the largest subspecies, the Southwest Black Rhino, to "near threatened", while the other two subspecies and entire species remained classified as "critically endangered".
In Zimbabwe, after almost 30 years of absence, the black rhinos are back in Gonarezhou National Park. To establish a new population, 29 rhinos were transferred to Gonarezhou National Park in July 2021 from Bubye Valley Animal Sanctuary, Malilangwe Wildlife Sanctuary and Save Valley Animal Sanctuary. The Gonarezhou Conservation Trust, an innovative conservation partnership between the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Service and the Zoological Society of Frankfurt, is responsible for the management of Gonarezhou National Park.
In the first half of 2021, the Bubye Valley Animal Sanctuary reported no poaching losses and a population increase of more than 6% due to several births. Following the crisis of 77 rhinos poached in 2019, poaching in Zimbabwe continued to decline, allowing populations to recover and grow.
Namibia has the largest surviving population of black rhinos in Africa and is the home base of the Southwest Asian species, with about 90% of the total population of black rhinos in the country. Etosha National Park now has the world's largest population of black rhinos, and rhino populations are growing steadily under the well-established and innovative conservation and management programs implemented by the Namibian government. Therefore, the future of the South-West Asian species depends to a large extent on Namibia maintaining appropriate conservation capacity.
Save the Rhino International (SRI), the International Rhino Foundation's uk-based partner, reports that the current poaching crisis is the most immediate threat to rhinos and threatens to undo the conservation gains of the past 20 years. Namibia has suffered fewer incidents than neighbouring South Africa, but significant poaching and risk remain.
At the same time as the poaching crisis, a major drought of 2017-2019 means that proactive population management is critical to the survival of Rhinos in Namibia. Animals must be moved to areas that are able to maintain sufficient water and ensure safety. These relocation projects are vital for the country's rhinos.
In the early 1980s, the Kenyan government realized that black rhinos were heading for local extinction and implemented several strategies aimed at saving the species. One collaborative strategy is to house the remaining black rhinos in relatively small, densely protected fenced reserves on government and private land. All black rhinos in Kenya are owned by the state; private and community reserves can apply to the Kenya Wildlife Service to become "guardians" of black rhinos.
Kenya develops a new Black Rhino Action Plan every five years. The currently planned goal is to achieve a population of 830 black rhinos by the end of 2021. The worst year of poaching in Kenya was in 2013, when 59 animals were killed, more than 5 percent of the country's rhino population. Since then, poaching rates have declined, with only 4 rhinos poached in 2019 and no animals poached during 2020, the first zero poaching year in 21 years.
Wildlife crime is an ever-changing challenge that requires collaboration and coordination within and between countries, as the rhino horn trade is controlled by large criminal groups operating globally. The demand for rhino horn used on the black market remains the biggest threat to the survival of rhinos. Continued coordination of law enforcement among States is essential to break the control of international criminal groups over trade.