RhinoFit™ teams up with the Save the Rhino Foundation

RhinoFit™ is teaming up with the Save the Rhino Foundation to help raise money &  create global awareness  for the protection of the rhino species. RhinoFit is asking that you help us and join in our efforts to conserve the rhino by donating today.

Save the Rhino Mission

• Raising funds to protect and increase rhino numbers and population distribution in African and Asian range states
• Facilitating the exchange of technical support and information between rhino conservation stakeholders
• Ensuring that local communities in key rhino areas benefit from employment, capacity building, education, outreach and the sustainable use of natural resources
• Developing and delivering behaviour-change campaigns to reduce the demand for rhino horn in consumer countries
• Raising global awareness of the need for urgent action on rhino conservation

The Rhino Population

At the beginning of the 20^th century there were 500,000 rhinos across Africa and Asia. This fell to 70,000 by 1970 and further to just 29,000 in the wild today. Despite this bleak picture, and the continuing threat of poaching for their valuable horns, global rhino population figures have been increasing in recent years thanks to the persist efforts of conservation programs.

The overwhelming rhino conservation success story is that of the southern white rhino. With numbers as low as 50 left in the wild in the early 1900s, this subspecies of rhino has now increased to between 19,682 and 21,077  and has become the most populous of all the rhino species. However the alarming increase in poaching since 2008 threatens to undermine the rhino conservation successes made in Africa over the last two decades.

Large-scale poaching of the now critically endangered black rhino resulted in a dramatic 96% decline from 65,000 individuals in 1970 to just 2,300 in 1993. Thanks to the persistent efforts of conservation programs across Africa black rhino numbers have risen since the early 1990s to a current population of between 5,042 and 5,455 individuals.

In Asia the populations of Sumatran and Javan rhinos are extremely low and both species are listed as critically endangered. There are fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild, and efforts are now being invested in captive breeding in an attempt to boost the population.

The Javan story is sadly even more shocking with an estimated 58 to 61 individuals left in a single population in Ujung Kulon National Park. Local conservationists, supported by Save the Rhino, are working hard to increase the habitat for this species since it is believed that the current habitat cannot support any more rhinos, and Rhino Protection Units have been set up to monitor and protect both the remaining Javan and Sumatran  rhinos.

Rhino population figures