When I started writing this post, I had intended it as a lead-in to this week's RINO Sightings Carnival, which is hosted by BloodSpite at Technography.

It's a great carnival, artistically and poetically presented, and I highly recommend it.

Lots of good rhino pictures, too, and the pictures served as a poignant reminder that the critter we like to emulate is in serious, serious trouble. I say that not as an environmentalist, because I'm not an environmentalist.

However, I am someone who admires these grand animals and hates stupidity and ignorance. And I am very sorry to read that the West African black rhino has apparently become extinct, as a result of poaching:

One of four sub-species of African black rhinoceros has been declared extinct after researchers failed to find the animal in its last known habitat.

The West African black rhino (Diceros bicornis longipes) had fallen from a population of around 3,000 to just 10 in recent years but today specialists from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said no traces of the creature had been found during a recent survey in northern Cameroon.

"As a result this subspecies has been tentatively declared as extinct," said Dr Martin Brooks, the chairman of the African Rhino Specialist Group at the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.

The sub-species, one of six types of rhino found in Africa, had been decimated by poaching for its horn, which is used as an aphrodisiac in Yemen and China. The long porous border between Chad and Cameroon, where the rhino enjoyed West Africa's savannah, prevented easy protection.

In 2000, Dr Brooks estimated that just ten of the rhinos were still alive and could have drifted too far apart from each other to breed.

A shame, but what is not entirely clear from the article is whether the primary culprit is the use of the horn as an aphrodisiac. It appears not, as the primary uses are as Yemeni daggers and in Chinese medicine:

Africa's "black" and "white" rhinoceros total about 3,600 and 11,100 individuals, respectively. The Indian rhino numbers about 2,400. The Javanese and Sumatran rhinos are in truly dire condition. About 300 Sumatran rhinos survive in peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, and Indonesia (and perhaps a few in Thailand and Burma); only about 60 Javanese rhinos remain in the wild, including one group of 50 in Java and a second population of around 10 in Vietnam.

Why the decline? Asian rhinos probably suffer most from loss of habitat. In Africa, horn trade may be the most dangerous factor. Wildlife biologists believe horn poaching for two big export markets cut black rhino populations from about 70,000 to 2,550 between 1970 and the mid-1990s. The first market (in China, Korea, and Taiwan) is traditional Asian medicine, where rhino horn is ground to a powder used to treat headaches and fevers. Across the Red Sea, meanwhile, horn is used for the ornamental hilts of traditional Yemeni daggers known as jambiyya. (These are curved knives about a foot long, reported by the Yemen Times to cost $800-$5,000 apiece. Per capita income in Yemen is about $450.) A 1997 staff report from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species estimated that 67 tons of rhino horn had been shipped from Africa to Yemen in the 1980s and early 1990s. With a typical horn weighing three kilos, jambiyya-making may account for the loss of 22,000 rhinos over these years.

As to the rhino horn's use in Chinese medicine, it's grounded in rank superstition. The horns have been studied scientifically, and found to have no medicinal properties, and no aphrodisiac effects.

Furthermore, the only places where the rhino horn has ever been used as an aphrodisiac were said to be in certain parts of India, and even that has died out. Thus, the report that it's "used as an aphrodisiac in Yemen and China" would seem to be incorrect.

Medicine, yes. Dagger handle, yes. Aren't these ignorant customs superstitious and idiotic enough without having to blame sex too?

I'm sorry that it's too late to save the West African Black Rhino, and that there isn't a damned thing I can do about it.

The whole thing is a crying shame.

Sigh.

While it won't save the real rhinos, as a means of combatting ignorance I don't see how reading this week's RINO Sightings Carnival can do any harm.

American RINOs are a relatively new breed, and fortunately, they're far from extinct.