For the past decade, poachers have killed rhinoceroses in the wild and in protected reserves around the world at alarming rates, threatening the survival of four of the world’s five rhino species.
The poaching is driven by a demand for rhino horns in southeast Asia that has grown nearly insatiable; so much so, experts say, that any living rhino — anywhere in the world — is now at risk of being killed.
Perhaps no rhino death illustrates that threat more forcefully than the killing of Vince, a 4-year-old male white rhino who was slaughtered this week inside his enclosure at a zoo outside Paris. The rhino — discovered by his keeper at the Thoiry Zoological Park on Tuesday — now holds the ominous distinction of likely being the first rhino to be killed by poachers inside a zoo, experts said.
