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NC Zoo Helps Rhino Conservation Effort Hampered By Pandemic

Image of black rhinocerous by Rich Bergl/N.C. Zoo

The North Carolina Zoo is part of an effort to conserve the habitat of black rhinos in Africa, where attempts to protect them have become harder after the pandemic struck.

Part of the plan is to expand the use of software that helps rangers assess the threat of poachers who hunt the animals for their horns, which are sold on an international black market. 

Black rhinoceroses once roamed much of southern and eastern Africa, but poaching has reduced their numbers. There are fewer than 6,000 in the wild now.

In Namibia, money from tourism is used to fund the conservation effort, which has helped the population return a bit. But that money dried up when the pandemic hit and global tourism slumped sharply.

The North Carolina Zoo is contributing to the conservation effort with help from a $50,000 grant from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. 

The effort to assist the black rhinos also will help preserve white rhino habitat. 

A herd of the animals is known as a “crash” of rhinos. The North Carolina Zoo has a crash of nine females, including two calves born last year.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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