Black Rhino Friday

The day after the American Thanksgiving holiday has come to be known as Black Friday. Although its name has a rather ominous sound, it marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and has a very positive commercial context. Black Friday is regarded by many as the day that businesses begin to show a profit for the year –the day they begin to operate “in the black” versus “in the red”.
This year, the International Rhino Foundation has decided to call the day after Thanksgiving Black Rhino Friday – a day to take stock of black rhino populations around the world. The black rhino was once the most abundant of the world’s rhinos, probably numbering in the hundreds of thousands of animals throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, but unregulated hunting and poaching reduced the wild population to perhaps 2,500 individuals in the early 1990s – a loss of more than 95% that brought the species close to the brink of extinction. This near catastrophe, in fact, was what gave birth to the International Rhino Foundation.
Black Rhino Friday falls on November 29th this year. For an update on the African black rhino’s status and efforts that are helping to ensure its survival, please visit our website (www.rhinos.org) today.