 Reference Base  The decline of elephant and black rhinoceros in Ethiopia |
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| Location: |
Africa - Eastern Africa - Ethiopia |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
Black Rhino |
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the black rhinoceros is now reduced to a level where conservation has almost ceased to be a realistic proposition. Formerly wide spread and evidently quite common in some areas. Its range probably remained little altered until about 1900, but thereafter the populations suffered a collapse of devastating rapidity and proportions. The black rhinoceros is believed to have been extinct in the central Rift Valley of Ethiopia by 1909 (Escherich 1911) and in most of the north-western part of the country 10 years later. There seems to have been a population crash in the Ogaden of eastern Ethiopia at much the same time, Drake Brockman apparently being the last traveller to encounter the species in this area, although small numbers possibly survived here, as in northern Somalia, until the 1930s. In the Awash Valley rhinos perhaps lingered until about 1940, if an anonymous 1940 report report is accepted, but they must have disappeared soon afterwards. Sport hunting seems to have played a large part in these rapid declines.
The assessment by Western and Vigne (1985) of 20 in 1980 and 10 in 1984 seems both very optimistic and spuriously accurate.
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