At the Dallas show, I saw a booth that was advertising the rates for Black Rhino. $20,000 for a dart hunt or $150,000 trophy fee. They had two big pictures posted.

The one that appeared to be shot was by a lady and the other one appeared to be dart hunted was by a man. The one that was "shot" had his eyes open and it looked like two bullet holes to the head. The one that was "dart" hunted just looked like he was asleep.

I didn't get a chance to speak with them, but I was wondering if anyone knew who the lady might be.


These numbers are from the International Rhino Foundation


Southwestern Black Rhino ~ 1310
Northwestern Black Rhino ~ 5+?
Eastern Black Rhino ~ 520
Southern Black Rhino ~1,770
TOTAL BLACK RHINO ~3,610

http://www.rhinos-irf.org/rhinoinformation/populationtable.htm

A lady, Coleen Cline, from Sacramento darted a black rhino with Peter Thormahlen from Thormahlen & Cochran Safaris. Of the 3 black rhino that I know had been hunted in 2005, a male client of Peter hunted the first one as well. This client chose to keep his identity private.

I note that, on that map, the entire Selous is shown as the black rhino's current range. Would that that were true!

But that is not so. Relentless and uncontrolled poaching in the '70s and '80s nearly eradicated the black rhino from the Selous.

These days, there is only one block in the Selous with any black rhino, and there they are carefully monitored by a dedicated team of game scouts, to protect them from poachers, even now.