Asian rhinos - Threats

What are the problems facing Asian rhinos?

Habitat loss and conflict with humans over living space is a significant problem for all 3 Asian rhino species

All suffer from poaching
The greatest threat by far to Asian rhino populations is poaching.

Although there is no scientific proof of its medical value, rhino horn is highly prized in traditional Asian medicine, where it is ground into a fine powder or manufactured into tablets as a treatment for a variety of illnesses such as nosebleeds, strokes, convulsions, and fevers.

As a result, poachers continue to kill the animals to take the horn, despite increased surveillance and protection.

Greater one-horned rhino
Thanks to conservation efforts, the greater one-horned (or Indian) rhino population has grown from 600 to 2,400 since 1975, with the largest population, 1,700 individuals, in India’s Kaziranga National Park.

At the same time, tree growth has reduced the rhinos’ grassland habitat, and concurrent human population growth has led to conflict with rhinos over the remaining available non-forest areas. In this reduced living space, rhinos have destroyed farm crops and caused some human casualties, and humans have retaliated against the animals.

Sumatran & Javan Rhinos
The same problem exists for the other 2 species, with slightly different parameters.

The issue leading to conflict with humans is not that trees are reducing grassland, but that defoliation and land-clearing are reducing the rhinos’ tropical forest habitat.

In southern Vietnam, over a quarter of a million people live in the buffer zone around Cat Tien National Park, home to the last three to eight Vietnamese Javan rhinos in the world. The area was badly defoliated by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s and continues to lose natural forest cover at a shocking rate.

Similarly, deforestation for farming and plantation crops is severely threatening Sumatran rhino habitats in Indonesia.

This habitat loss not only reduces the available living space for rhinos. It also isolates and fragments rhino herds, making reproduction and genetic mixing difficult to impossible.