Cling dearly to any pictures you may come across of a rhinoceros, soon it will be the only proof we have of their existence. Give a man a gun, where there is money involved, and before long, every species will be extinct. It isn’t like these animals, any of them, asked for man to encroach on their land, they have been chased out of their natural habitats, hunted down and killed, along with their babies, and for what? For money, of course. How vile that none of these poachers give a damn that their own children will never see many species of these animals in the very near future.
The white rhinos are the main target of poachers, and as a result, there are only 20,160 left in the wild, but that number falls every day as more are slaughtered. They shoot them and while many lie there suffering from horrendous wounds, they cut off their horns. In 1985, the number of white rhinos left was merely 20 – but thankfully, because of those rare people that care, the number grew, and so the hunt was on to poach more and more. These people do not care if they too, become completely extinct, as long as they sell the horns on the black market and make some money.
The black rhinos,which are critically endangered, are down to 4,880. The western black rhino subspecies that once inhabited much of sub-Saharan Africa were declared extinct in 2011. Yet the search and destroy missions the poachers are on continue. All in the name of money, all to cut off their horns, not giving the slightest damn how the animal is tortured in the process, not giving a damn that they are killing all there is left, wiping out an entire species!
The Greater One Horned Rhinos are classified as vulnerable, though thankfully they are protected in parks in northern India and Nepal. Their numbers have grown from 200 in the early 1990s to 2,700. But how will that number again fall as the poaching continues? At least in these two places, they have protected this species from being totally erased.
The critically endangered Sumatran Rhinos have been decimated by poaching. In Indonesia and Malaysia, they roam in small groups but have only limited protection. There are only, at most, 250 left, yet, like all the other types, the slaughtering continues and the numbers are fading fast.
The last wild Javan Rhino in Vietnam was shot by poachers in 2010. There are only about 30 surviving in western Java, Indonesia. I wonder if it ever crossed that poacher’s mind that he was helping to destroy an entire species, or because of some quick cash, if he even cared.
So we wonder, why would this be allowed to happen? Why would anyone buy the Rhino horn? Why offer cash to kill off a species? Well, it’s highly sought after, because in places like China, people believe that it cures all kinds of ailments and disease, so of course, these poachers that sell it on the black market, taking advantage of the ignorance many of these people suffer from. How I wish that it could cure the ignorance itself. I’ve never understood one thing: I realize that there are all different kinds of cultures, but how can entire countries be so clueless? Why believe that anything is a cure without medical studies? Legitimate ones, though, that show proof of what you’re buying into. Of course there are those unscrupulous types that will swear to anything if there’s a buck involved, and it reminds me of the traveling medicine shows and the miracle tonics they sold to so many. We are supposed to be civilized people, so when will those of us that care stand up and demand a change? Men have killed off the very last of so many species, plus they have wiped out much of the sea life as well in widespread massacres. If this continues, when we are close to the last animal being slaughtered, the last species, men will turn on each other even more than they do now and begin killing one another!
thesmartcritic 