25 Northern White Rhinos And Counting - Telegraph

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Poachers have killed some of the last northern white rhinos in existence, a meeting at London Zoo will be told today. 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.

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. 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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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. 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.

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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