West African Black Rhino Feared Extinct

The West African black rhino appears to have become extinct, according to a leading global conservation group. Extensive searches throughout the black rhino's last known habitat in northern Cameroon have failed to find any rhinos or signs of their existence.

The western black rhino sub-species, Diceros bicornis longipes, had declined precipitously in the past 20 years largely as a result of poaching. In 2002 there were only 10 remaining. The few left were distributed over a wide area, making breeding more difficult.

Specialists from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) mounted 48 field missions in Cameroon, in which they searched across 1,550 miles. "They looked for spoor [tracks], they looked for the rhino's characteristic way of feeding which has an effect like a pruning shear, but they didn't find anything to indicate a continued presence in the area," Richard Emslie, scientific officer with the IUCN's species survival commission, told the BBC.

The search missions did, however, come across lots of evidence of poaching, There is a lucrative black market trade in rhino horn, which is prized in Asia as an aphrodisiac.

The numbers of all types of African rhino have plummeted over the past 150 years. Colonial hunters picked off the distinctive herbivores as trophies. The northern white rhino is also critically threatened as it is down to just four in its only remaining habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The southern white rhino reached its lowest point in 1895, with just 30 in one South African game park. Since then captive breeding and protection measures have brought numbers up to nearly 15,000. Groups have also been re-established in other countries.

The black rhino's decline came later. The continent-wide population numbered about 100,000 in 1900, but declined to 2,400 by 1995. Intensive protection measures in southern Africa have brought its numbers back up to about 3,600.