Clipping your nails and cutting your hair isn't all that difficult for us. It can be done in a painless (unless you catch something you're not supposed to!) and non-lethal (unless you visit one Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street) way. Unfortunately, rhinos aren't quite so lucky. Their horns are made of the same material as our nails and hair (a protein called keratin) and are a sought after commodity in the Asian medicine market. Poachers, after their horns, have to kill the individual rhino in order to claim their bounty and this has devastating effects on rhino populations which are already under pressure due to their homes being destroyed by human development.
The desire for rhino horn has taken the ultimate toll this week when it was announced that the Javan rhino is now confirmed as extinct in Vietnam after the last one was killed by poachers last year. The loss of this population means that the number of Javan rhinos is now hovering around the 44 individuals mark, all of which are found on Java. Amazingly though according to Susie Ellis of the International Rhino Foundation, Javan rhinos aren't the species of rhino teetering closest to the precipice of extinction. It's cousin, the Sumatran rhino, is in an even more precarious position. The decline of the Sumatran rhino has been much quicker, thanks to the loss of the places where they live and it's a worryingly common story for the plants and wildlife in tropical forests all over the world.
We’re not lucky enough to have Sumatran rhinos in Harapan Rainforest, but we do have a whole host of other vulnerable species there, like the Sumatran tiger, who are at risk from similar human activities. We're doing as much as we can, here and in our other rainforest work, to make sure that the vulnerable species that live there don't fall over the edge into oblivion.
But we can't do it all on our own. It's with the help of our partners, funders and people like you that providing havens for vulnerable wildlife is possible. Thank you!