Rhinos Down to 400 as Poaching Intensifies in Botswana

Due to ongoing and increased poaching, the rhino population in Botswana has been reduced to just 400 individuals.

On Monday, Botswana disclosed that it had experienced a sharp increase in rhino poaching over the five years leading up to 2022, which amounted to about one-third of its population of the critically endangered species.

Rhino Poaching Intensifies

According to testimony given to parliament by Philda Kereng, minister of tourism, 138 rhinos were killed between 2018 and 2017.

In contrast, only two rhinos were poached in the previous five years, from 2012 to 2017.

According to statistics Kereng presented to the legislature, homicides spiked to seven in 2018 before falling to 30 the following year. The number of murders spiked once more in 2020 to 62, then dropped to six last year after halving to 33 in 2021.

She attributed the increase in killings to poachers being driven out of other southern African states as well as an increase in the demand for rhino horn on the global market.

Increased patrols in national parks have made it necessary for hunters looking for rhino horns to turn their attention elsewhere, which has resulted in a steady decline in the number of animals killed in neighboring nations in South Africa, which is the traditional rhino poaching hotspot.

Demand from Asia, where rhino horns have been used in traditional and folk medicine for their alleged therapeutic effect, drives rhino poaching, according to NPR.

Rhinos in Botswana

Although Botswana withholds information about its rhino population, a report the government submitted to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) held in Panama last year indicated that the country was home to approximately 285 white rhinos and 23 black rhinos.

According to Rhino Conservation Botswana, the number of rhinos in the nation in 2019 was just under 400, with the majority of them foraging on the grasslands of the northern Okavango Delta.

Another government document claims that Botswana started dehorning rhinos in recent years to make them less desirable to poachers, but that this practice has not been successful because the poachers would still be interested in the horn stump that was left behind.

To better protect the rhinos, rangers, law enforcement, as well as nongovernmental groups, have increased ground and aerial patrols, Voices of America reports.

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Rhinos of the World

In the past, rhinos were found in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and were depicted in cave paintings by early Europeans. At the start of the 20th century, there were 500,000 rhinos in Africa and Asia, but their population declined to 70,000 by 1970 and today only about 27,000 remain in the wild. Due to persistent poaching and habitat loss over many decades, very few rhinos now survive outside of national parks and reserves. The black, Javan, and Sumatran rhino species are critically endangered.

Protected sanctuaries in Africa have helped southern white rhinos to thrive, despite being thought to be extinct at one point, and they are now considered near threatened. However, the western black rhino and northern white rhino have both become extinct in the wild. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the only two remaining northern white rhinos are kept under 24-hour guard at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.