2013 State of the Rhino

All five rhino species are threatened to some degree. Populations of two species – greater one-horned and white – were reduced to the low hundreds at one point, but have rebounded into the thousands or tens of thousands over a century’s time. Africa’s black rhino was probably the most numerous of all, but reached a low point of only a few thousand animals in the late 1990s, and has essentially doubled its population since then. We have no reliable historical population estimates for the Sumatran and Javan rhinos, but each is now believed to number one hundred individuals or less, and both are imminently threatened with extinction. Despite the current poaching crisis, overall rhino numbers continue to increase steadily. However, the status of each species, as seen below, is significantly different.

Read the IRF 2013 State of the Rhino.