Wildlife trafficking remains a pressing threat to the survival of countless species, with sharks, pangolins, rhinos, birds, big cats and others among the hardest hit. Mongabay’s extensive reporting aligns with the 2024 U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) World Wildlife Crime Report, which highlights these species as prime targets of a $20 billion per […]
Tag: Rhinoceros
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Plants Are Becoming Less Nutritious Because of Climate Change, Impacting Herbivores From Insects to Giant Pandas
More than a third of animals on Earth are herbivores, but since plants don’t have a lot of calories it can be hard for grazers to eat enough to meet their energy needs. To add to the problem, climate change is lowering the nutritional value of certain foods that these plant eaters rely on. Fossil […]
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Birdwatch: a close encounter with a flying rhino in Borneo
I’d never seen a flying rhino before. Then again, I’d never visited the lowland rainforest of Borneo. This is the main stronghold of the rhinoceros hornbill, one of the largest and most imposing of its bizarre family. So when a huge black-and-white bird flew out of the forest canopy, I was suitably impressed. I was […]
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New brown bear ‘stronghold’ in Nepal redraws species’ range map
KATHMANDU — Researchers have discovered brown bears in a part of Nepal not previously known to host the species, prompting a call to protect this area as a bear “stronghold.” The finding, based on camera-trap images, also expands the known range of the brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Asia. It could also mark out the […]
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India’s Rhino Stronghold Sees 86% Drop in Poaching and Five-Fold Increase in Rhinos
Since 2016, poaching of one-horned rhinoceroses in India’s Assam state has fallen 86% after a change in government brought determined action to protect them By expanding protected areas and bolstering ranger patrols, the steady growth in the number of rhinos, seen since the late 60s, has now accelerated to the point where 3,000 horns grace […]
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Scientists Implant Radioactive Material into Horn of Living Rhinoceros to Poison Anyone Who Consumes it.
Warning Horn In an effort to make them useless to poachers, researchers are implanting radioactive isotopes into the horns of rhinos in South Africa. The unusual material would “render the horn useless… essentially poisonous for human consumption,” James Larkin, professor and dean of science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told Agence France-Presse. […]