- Poachers have killed some of the last northern white
rhinos in existence, a meeting at London Zoo will be told today.
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- There are thought to be fewer than 25 northern white
rhinos, all of them in Garamba national park, and they are one of the world's
12 most endangered species.
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- Garamba, on the border of the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, formerly Zaire, is an area of immense savannah grassland and
woodland, designated a World Heritage Site. It is also home to elephants,
including the rarer forest elephants, hippos, buffalos and chimpanzees.
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- Around half of the hippos and elephants were poached
for their ivory during the "liberation war" of 1997 and the struggle
for control that followed it. Now, as civil war from Sudan spills into
the area, both species join the rhinos as a cause of concern for conservationists.
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- Dr Kes Hillman-Smith, the co-ordinator of the Garamba
national park project, has worked in the park for 20 years but now lives
in Nairobi because of fears for her security. She said the present poachers
were Sudanese horsemen said to be from the area of conflict around Darfur.
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- "It is the first time they have got into Garamba.
Unless there is a major level of support we are going to lose the last
population of northern white rhinos," she said.
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- A week ago two forest guards and three poachers are thought
to have been killed in a gun battle. A guard and a trainer were wounded.
Local people said the poachers were Baggara people from Bahr El Gazal in
southern Sudan.
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- The northern white rhino is genetically distinct from
the population of white rhinos in southern Africa. There was once a large
population in Uganda, but this was wiped out under Idi Amin.
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- The rhino population - which rose to 35 after the poaching
epidemic of the late 1980s - was 30 in April 2003. Since then, six have
been killed and four born.
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- A thousand elephants out of a population of around 7,000
have been poached, Dr Hillman-Smith said. Two dead rhinos and 12 dead elephants
were found last month. "I can't say how many rhinos are alive or dead
at the moment, but I'm pretty worried," Dr Hillman-Smith said.
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- The elephant and hippo ivory is smuggled out through
Uganda and Sudan, despite a global ban on the ivory trade. The rhino horn
has a ready market in Yemen, where rhino horn dagger-handles are a status
symbol.
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- At the UK Rhino Group's annual Rhino Mayday meeting at
London Zoo today Dr Hillman-Smith will launch an appeal for more funding
so that forces equipped with better weapons, helicopters and vehicles can
be brought in.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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