Word: rhinos
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Four years ago, Bentsen turned 80 acres of his 2,200-acre spread into an experimental breeding ground for a pair of endangered black rhinos. Zoos are cramped. Bentsen's expansive pastures offer the South African-born animals most of the comforts of home. "This is fine rhino country," says Bentsen, as he pulls off the highway onto a sandy dirt road. Suddenly you are in south Texas as it was before the developers paved it over. In a soft morning fog, a visitor might mistake the silvery mesquite thickets and rough grass clearings for Africa's Zambezi valley...
...massive beast puts on the brakes just short of a six-bar iron fence that separates man and animal. With a deft twist of his heavy, pointed lips, Macho plucks a slice of apple from Bentsen's hand. Bentsen reaches through the bars to scratch the leathery muzzle. Rhinos are slow-witted, almost childlike creatures that when startled tend to charge first and ask questions later. But once it knows your voice, a captive rhino can be called like...
Despite the alarm with which scientists view this trend, biodiversity has just surfaced on the world's political agenda. The troubles of high-profile animals such as the tiger and rhino grab public attention, while most people hardly see the point of worrying about insects or plants. But extinction is the one environmental calamity that is irreversible. As these lowly species disappear unnoticed, they take with them hard-won lessons of survival encoded in their genes over millions of years...
Meanwhile, the legal market for elephant ivory is on the increase. "Our fear is that the recent resurgence in heavy poaching of elephants may spill over onto black rhino," says David Western, director of Wildlife Conservation International. In Kenya alone the black-rhino population has dwindled from 20,000 in 1970 to only 450 today...
After poachers killed three rangers last August, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi issued a shoot-on-sight policy. But wildlife experts are concerned that as long as trade in ivory and rhino horn continues, the government is destined to lose its battle to stop the butchery...