A male Northern white rhino died at the San Diego Zoo last Sunday, and there are only five left in the world. "Last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the northern white rhino as 'teetering on the brink of extinction'", and their high risk of poaching, primarily for buyers in the East Asia market, have made their number dwindle, because just their horns can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Angalifu's (44) passing has made Nola (elderly female northern white rhino) and a few others rhinos in a wildlife conservative in Kenya the last five Northern white rhinos. Not to be confused with the Southern white rhino.
The mass extinction of the northern white rhinos reminds me of the mass killing of the buffalo on America's Great Plains by white settlers. The mass amounts of buffalo were so plentiful that settlers could shoot them freely from their trains to keep the buffalo from stopping the railroad and just for fun. Settlers often left the rest of the beast to rot in the middle of the plain just to get their pelts. Soon they would rot and their bones were used for fertilizer. Unlike the killings by settlers, Native Americans killed the buffalo and used every single part of its body, until it was completely consumed. Attitudes towards certain animals because of their fur or horns have lead to mass changes of the environment and ecosystem, and the animals unfortunate demise.
1. http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/us/san-diego-white-rhino-dead/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting
Many animals have gone extinct or have neared extinction because of the fact that people over hunt them down for parts of them. The same happened to beavers in colonial time period.
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