New research is ringing alarm bells about how climate change may impact one of Africa’s most iconic and vulnerable animals: the rhinoceros. “Climate change has the potential of wiping out all of them in the blink of an eye,” says Hlelowenkhosi Mamba, an Eswatini native and Fulbright scholar. Mamba and Timothy Randhir, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, spent two years obtaining climate modeling and rhino GPS coordinates in five national parks across Southern Africa to understand how two different climate change scenarios might impact the bulk of the world’s remaining black (Diceros bicornis) and white (Ceratotherium simum) rhinos, the two rhino species found in Africa. White rhino, Kruger National Park (South Africa). Image by Rhett Butler/Mongabay. Rhinos, unable to sweat through their super-thick skin, rely on nature for survival, requiring shade trees, mud pits and watering holes to regulate their body temperature. Climate change threatens these vital features, making them scarcer and altering rhino behaviors and population dynamics. In a paper published in January, Mamba and Randhir write that hotter temperatures and increasingly water-starved landscapes will lead to the rhinos stress eating and spending more time escaping the heat, affecting their access to food, water and shade. This will also likely send them into areas with more humans and conflict. On top of the ongoing risk of poaching, these climate change influences could drive rhinos to extinction in these parks by the end of the 21st century, the researchers warn. “People think that rhinoceroses are very strong and robust…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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