Saving White Rhinos in Africa

Yep, another animal story from Meghan. I'm actually using two separate articles, because they both are related to each other: stopping the illegal poaching of white rhinos.

Just as poaching elephants for their tusks is illegal, so is poaching white rhinos for their horns.  In Africa, this is a big problem that many people are hoping to permanently stop in the near future.  This past week, a Thai man was sentenced to 40 years in prison in South Africa for exporting white rhino horns: "the country's strongest illegal wildlife sentence to date."  I am so proud of South Africa for coming down so hard on poachers in their country; it's something that needs to be done more often. People get off on hurting animals way too easily all around the world - the US often lets animal abusers off with very light sentences (at least in my opinion) and the society in general has only recently become more sympathetic to the plight of domesticated animals.  To Africans, white rhinos are extremely important and the poaching of such animals is just wrong.  You can read more about the Thai man's sentence here.

In another area of Africa, in Kenya, there was poignant photograph taken of a 24-hour white rhino watch at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.  It won first place in the World Press Photo contest and will appear at the Royal Festival Hall in London.



You can find the original article on this here.