SA rhino poaching at record high

SA rhino poaching at record high

The number of rhino poached in South Africa has reached a record high, says the World Wildlife Fund.

Johannesburg - The number of rhino poached in South Africa has reached a record high, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said on Thursday.

Statistics from SA National Parks show that 341 animals have been lost to poaching so far in 2011, compared to a record total of 333 last year," the fund said in a statement.

Three of the five rhino species globally were critically endangered.
The last reported poaching took place in the Free State on October 24.
The carcasses of an adult pregnant cow and another younger cow were found at the Sandveld nature reserve, near Bloemhof.

Extinct in Vietnam
This was followed by a WWF announcement in the same week that rhino in Vietnam have gone extinct.
The carcass of Vietnam’s last Javan rhino was found with a gunshot wound and without its horn.
There were now fewer than 50 Javan rhinos left globally, all held in one national park in Indonesia.
In an effort to increase South African numbers, 19 black rhino were successfully moved from the Eastern Cape to Limpopo on Wednesday as part of the WWF black rhino range expansion project.
The weeklong transfer was completed on Wednesday. This was the seventh black rhino population established in the country by the WWF.
Close to 120 black rhino have been relocated to date.
This was possible because of the far-sightedness of the Eastern Cape provincial government who were prepared to become partners in the project for the sake of black rhino conservation in South Africa, the WWF's project leader Jacques Flamand said in a statement.