Woodland Park Zoo will get its first-ever rhinos next spring. The temporary Assam Rhino Reserve will be designed to spotlight wildlife trafficking and the turtle extinction crisis. It will house Greater one-horned rhinoceros, Asian brown tortoises, and demoiselle cranes.
Photo by Grahm S. Jones, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, courtesy of Woodland Park Zoo.
Five species of rhinos survive today: black, white, greater one-horned, Sumatran and Javan. In the last 200 years, the rhino population has plummeted from one million to fewer than 30,000 worldwide.
Also known as the Indian rhino, the greater one-horned is second in size only to the white rhino, weighing 4,000 to 6,000 pounds. It has a single horn that is about 8 to 25 inches long; a gray-brown hide with skin folds gives it an armor-plated appearance. Once found across the entire northern part of the Indian subcontinent, the population plummeted due to sport hunting, human conflict, poaching for their horns for use in traditional medicine and habitat loss. Because of conservation efforts by government and NGOs working together, World Wildlife Fund said the population has increased from as few as 350 animals just a few decades ago to more than 3,500 by 2015 in the Terai Arc Landscape of India and Nepal, and the grasslands of Assam and north Bengal in northeast India.
