Between 19 an astonishing 98 percent of black rhinos were killed by poachers, either to feed the new and voracious demand for TCM or, to a lesser extent, for horns to be used as ceremonial knife handles in the Middle East. That's when poachers descended on Africa. (This last claim is a fairly recent development.) Among the many "cures" touted by China's "New Medicine" was powdered rhino horn, which was said to cure everything from fevers to cancer. Even though Chairman Mao himself did not believe in TCM, he called for its use over Western medicine. The final nail in the rhinos' coffin began in the early 1950s, when Mao Zedong promoted so-called traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as a tool for unifying the country he had recently come to lead. Farmers and ranchers at the time viewed large herbivores such as rhinos as pests and dangers to their crops. Industrial agriculture came next, clearing many historic rhino habitats for fields and settlements. Widespread sports hunting in the first decades of the century quickly decimated rhino populations. Although it had lived in these countries for centuries, the western black-like most rhinos-found itself to be incompatible with the 20th century. Historically, the western black rhino had a fairly large range across central and western Africa, with populations in modern-day Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan, making it the northernmost African rhino subspecies. It is a story of greed, indifference, hope and despair. This is the tale of how we lost one of those subspecies, the western black rhinoceros ( Diceros bicornis longipes). By 2001 that number had dropped to about 2,300 black rhinos and just three subspecies. At the beginning of the 20th century, an estimated one million black rhinoceroses from four different subspecies roamed the savannas of Africa. ↑ Knight, Matthew () Western black rhino declared extinct.Cite has empty unkent parameter: |last-author-amp= ( help) CS1 maint: ref=harv ( link) Internaitional Union for Conservation o Naitur. "Historical distribution of the black rhinoceros ( Diceros bicornis) in West Africa" (PDF). Cite uses deprecated parameter |lastauthoramp= ( help) The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species doi: 10.2305/IUCN.UK. The species oweraw is classifee'd as critically endangered, an ane subspecies, the wastren black rhinoceros, wis declared extinct bi the IUCN in 2011. These species are nou whiles referred tae as the square-lipped (for white) or huik-lipped (for black) rhinoceros. The wird "white" in the name "white rhinoceros" is a misinterpretation o the Afrikaans wird wyd, itself derived frae the Dutch wird wijd for wide, referrin tae its square upper lip, as opponed tae the pyntit or huiked lip o the black rhinoceros. The ither African rhinoceros is the white rhinoceros ( Ceratotherium simum). Altho the rhinoceros is referred tae as black, its colours vary frae broun tae gray. The black rhinoceros or hook-lipped rhinoceros ( Diceros bicornis) is a species o rhinoceros, hamelt in eastren an central Africae includin Kenyae, Tanzanie, Cameroon, Sooth Africae, Namibie, Zimbabwe, an Angolae. Native reintroduced introduced possibly extinct extinct Hatched: Possible historical range in Wast Africae.
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