Link 1. Poachers kill rhino and remove horn

According to savetherhino.org (2015), poachers in South Africa are being supplied with equipment to track and kill the rhinos for international organized crime. Sometimes, the poachers will use a tranquilizer gun to immobilize the rhino, but in the process of hacking off the horn, many of the rhinos slowly bleed to death. The poachers also have weapons to use against rangers or law enforcement that try to stop the poaching. The map below shows the location of Kruger National Park, where most of the illegal poaching occurs.

Kruger National Park

 

(Retrieved from news.nationalgeographic.com)

Below is a link to traffic.org, which is a “wildlife trade monitoring network,” that shows a picture of a rhino that has been killed for its horn. I did not want to put the picture on my web site because it is hard to look at, but if you are interested, you can use the link.

http://www.traffic.org/home/2015/1/22/south-africa-confirms-2014-worst-on-record-for-rhino-poachin.html

Environmental impact:

Black rhinos are a Critically Endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation and Nature (IUCN). If poaching continues to increase at the current rates, the remaining wild rhino populations could be extinct within the next 20 years (Biggs, 2013, p. 1038).

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