Rhino poaching continues to rise in Africa: study

The mass slaughter of rhinos in Africa has increased for the sixth year in a row in 2015 with at least 1,338 rhinos killed by poachers across the continent, researchers from an international conservation organization said on Thursday.

This was revealed by a study conducted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission's African Rhino Specialist Group (AfRSG).

The study said since the current crisis for rhino conservation began to emerge in 2008, poachers have killed at least 5,940 African rhinos.

"The extensive poaching for the illegal trade in rhino horn continues to undermine the rhino conservation successes made in Africa over the last two decades," said Mike Knight, Chair of IUCN's AfRSG.

The findings revealed that the number of rhinos killed in Kenya has declined while in Namibia it has quadrupled in the last two years as losses in Zimbabwe doubled over the same period.

In South Africa, home to the world's largest rhino population, the numbers killed in a single year in 2015 fell slightly for the first time since 2008.

"Over the last two years, poaching has declined in Kenya and, for the first time since 2008, the number of rhinos poached in the major range state, South Africa, fell slightly last year," the study showed.

The researchers blame continued demand from Southeast Asia, where rhino horn is wrongly believed to have medicinal properties.

The study said demands for rhino horn from Southeast are being fed by sophisticated and organized transnational crime networks.

However, increased law enforcement and expenditure in recent years have coincided with a slowing down in the rate of increase of poaching from 2013 to 2015.

IUCN Director General, Inger Andersen said the slight decrease demonstrates the commitment of field rangers who, at tremendous cost to themselves and their families, work tirelessly, risking their lives daily.

"Sadly, these improvements have been dampened by alarming increases in poaching over the past year in other vitally important range states, such as Namibia and Zimbabwe," he said.

According to the researchers, numbers of the more numerous white rhino appear to have levelled off on the continent, the number in 2015 was provisionally estimated at between 19,682 and 21,077.

While the total number of white rhino estimate is down by 0.4 percent per annum since 2012, this difference is within the margin of error around the estimates and not statistically significant.

According to IUCN, the black rhino, listed on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as critically endangered has fared slightly better with continental numbers for 2015 estimated at between 5,042 and 5,455 rhinos, representing a statistically significant 2.9 percent per annum increase on the updated 2012 estimate.

Poaching has, however, reduced growth in black rhino numbers to below the usual 5 percent increase per annum target growth rate.

"With immediate, urgent interventions on all fronts, we hopefully will be able to get rhinos onto a more positive growth curve again," Knight said.

According to IUCN, rhinos lost to poaching also represent a significant loss of revenue for African countries, reducing incentives for the private sector and communities to conserve rhino.

"Rhinos killed illegally in 2015 in South Africa alone represent an estimated loss of around 25 million U.S. dollars," the organization said.

South Africa currently conserves 79 percent of Africa's rhinos and has suffered 85% of rhino poaching on the continent since 2008. Enditem