The southern subspecies collapsed to just 20 individuals a century ago, but with dedicated protection it has made an astounding comeback - to around 20,000 animals today, by far the most numerous of all rhinos.īut the northern white rhino is virtually gone. The white rhino has two distinct subspecies. The black rhino was once widely distributed across eastern and southern Africa, but its numbers have dramatically fallen and nearly half of its unique subspecies have vanished. In Africa, white rhinos and black rhinos are having mixed fortunes - but mostly bad. But today it is one of the rarest mammals on Earth, with just 60 animals surviving in far western Java, Indonesia. The Javan rhinoceros was once the most abundant rhino species in Asia, ranging from South-East Asia to India and China. Today, they are some of the most endangered animals on Earth.įor instance, the Sumatran rhinoceros is so rare that biologists refuse to disclose where it still lives, to avoid tipping off poachers - beyond confirming it persists in small pockets of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Rhinos are relicts of a great megafauna that until recently dominated the planet. Chinese citizens and even diplomats working in Africa and Asia have reportedly engaged in the illegal smuggling of rhino horn and other wildlife products. Vietnam and China are overwhelmingly the biggest consumers of rhino horn. The world of all five species is being rapidly destroyed and shredded, their savanna and forest habitats sliced apart by clearings, fences, roads and other obstructions.Įven worse, they are being slaughtered by armed poachers for their valuable rhino horn, which is falsely thought to have aphrodisiac or curative properties for maladies ranging from hangovers to cancer. There are five species of rhinoceros in the world: two in Africa and three in Asia. But on reflection it's not quite as crazy as it sounds. Rhinos in Australia might seem like an insane proposition - after all, we've had historically bad luck with introduced species.