The Javan Rhino is Now Extinct in mainland Asia
by Ker Than
An adult female Javan rhino was shot and killed in a Vietnamese forest last year—leaving just one wild population left of the species in the world, a group of fewer than 50 individuals in a small park in Indonesia.
“The last Javan rhino in Vietnam has gone,” Tran Thi Minh Hien,Vietnam director of the nonprofit WWF, said in a statement. In April 2010 park rangers discovered the remains of the female rhino, which appeared to have died only a few months before.
“A veterinary pathologist estimated that the animal was an adult—but not elderly—individual, probably 15 to 25 years old,” Nick Cox, manager of WWF’s Species Programme in the Greater Mekong, said in an email.
A DNA comparison of skin taken from the corpse and from nearby rhino dung showed the DNA belonged to the same individual—quashing hopes that there might have been more than one rhino in the area. Poaching was the likely cause of death, WWF said, as a bullet was found in the animal’s leg and its horn had been removed. The horn of the Javan rhino is highly prized in Vietnam and China, where it’s ground into a powder and sold as a purported cure for ailments such as fever, arthritis, high blood pressure, and cancer…
(read more: National Geo) (photo: WWF Greater Mekong)
