AFP UK

In the freshwater swamp forest of Hlanzoun in southern Benin, majestic trees hum with chirping birds and playful monkeys.

Home to once bustling flora and fauna, experts now warn that the fragile environment, one of the last of its kind in the West African country and accessible only by canoe, is at risk of disappearing.

The 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of forest, which takes its name from the river Hlan, is home to 241 plant and 160 animal species including the rare red-bellied monkey, the marsh mongoose and the sitatunga, a swamp-dwelling antelope.

Perched at the top of a gigantic tree squawks a hornbill — a big bird known for its long, down-curved and colourful bill, similar to toucans. 

“Hornbills feed on insects and fruits. They like to follow monkeys around because they force insects to come out when they move around, making it easier for hornbills to catch,” explained Vincent Romera, a French ornithologist and photographer.

With his binoculars, Romera admires a family of monkeys jumping from tree to tree, while keeping a clear distance. 

“The animals here have become fearful,” he says. He’s considering using camera traps to try to photograph them, but also to count the forest’s animal population.

“The numbers are in free-fall,” he says.

Sometimes, the forest’s noisy concert is interrupted by gun shots, he says, probably from poachers.

– Logging –

Communities living around the forest “need money, so those who can shoot go and kill animals,” explained Roger Hounkanrin, a local tourist guide.

Despite steady economic growth in recent years, poverty is widespread in Benin, especially in rural areas, and 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line according to World Bank data.

On the side of the road that lines Hlanzoun forest, lizards, crocodiles and snakes killed by hunters are sold and bought. Monkeys, too, are sometimes sold for meat. 

But even more than poaching, excessive logging threatens the forest.

Between 2005 and 2015, Benin’s forest cover was slashed by more than 20 percent according to the World Bank, and the deforestation rate continues to be high at 2.2 percent annually.

Trees are cut down for firewood, and the fermented sap of palm trees is used to make a local alcohol, sodabi. 

The damaging practice of slash-and burn agriculture has also become more prevalent, warned Josea Dossou Bodjrenou, director of Nature Tropicale, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works on environmental issues in Benin.

The destruction of the forest habitat reduces areas where animals can thrive, forcing them towards farms to find food and exposing them to poachers.

“This is a location that is at risk of disappearing,” said local agricultural economist Judicael Alladatin. 

“It’s a poor area and we can’t blame people for wanting to feed themselves,” Alladatin said, urging authorities “to create conditions for alternative sources of income.”

The government does not officially recognise Hlanzoun forest despite lobbying efforts of several NGOs and scientific papers on the forest since 2000.

But it has started to recognise the importance of safeguarding forests in general, according to the World Bank, with recently updated forest policy and tax systems.

In Hlanzoun, the state “must act quickly” said Bodjrenou, and “support forest communities so that they can continue to make profit… but in a different way” by developing agriculture, trade and sustainable tourism.

In the freshwater swamp forest of Hlanzoun in southern Benin, majestic trees hum with chirping birds and playful monkeys.

Home to once bustling flora and fauna, experts now warn that the fragile environment, one of the last of its kind in the West African country and accessible only by canoe, is at risk of disappearing.

The 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of forest, which takes its name from the river Hlan, is home to 241 plant and 160 animal species including the rare red-bellied monkey, the marsh mongoose and the sitatunga, a swamp-dwelling antelope.

Perched at the top of a gigantic tree squawks a hornbill — a big bird known for its long, down-curved and colourful bill, similar to toucans. 

“Hornbills feed on insects and fruits. They like to follow monkeys around because they force insects to come out when they move around, making it easier for hornbills to catch,” explained Vincent Romera, a French ornithologist and photographer.

With his binoculars, Romera admires a family of monkeys jumping from tree to tree, while keeping a clear distance. 

“The animals here have become fearful,” he says. He’s considering using camera traps to try to photograph them, but also to count the forest’s animal population.

“The numbers are in free-fall,” he says.

Sometimes, the forest’s noisy concert is interrupted by gun shots, he says, probably from poachers.

– Logging –

Communities living around the forest “need money, so those who can shoot go and kill animals,” explained Roger Hounkanrin, a local tourist guide.

Despite steady economic growth in recent years, poverty is widespread in Benin, especially in rural areas, and 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line according to World Bank data.

On the side of the road that lines Hlanzoun forest, lizards, crocodiles and snakes killed by hunters are sold and bought. Monkeys, too, are sometimes sold for meat. 

But even more than poaching, excessive logging threatens the forest.

Between 2005 and 2015, Benin’s forest cover was slashed by more than 20 percent according to the World Bank, and the deforestation rate continues to be high at 2.2 percent annually.

Trees are cut down for firewood, and the fermented sap of palm trees is used to make a local alcohol, sodabi. 

The damaging practice of slash-and burn agriculture has also become more prevalent, warned Josea Dossou Bodjrenou, director of Nature Tropicale, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works on environmental issues in Benin.

The destruction of the forest habitat reduces areas where animals can thrive, forcing them towards farms to find food and exposing them to poachers.

“This is a location that is at risk of disappearing,” said local agricultural economist Judicael Alladatin. 

“It’s a poor area and we can’t blame people for wanting to feed themselves,” Alladatin said, urging authorities “to create conditions for alternative sources of income.”

The government does not officially recognise Hlanzoun forest despite lobbying efforts of several NGOs and scientific papers on the forest since 2000.

But it has started to recognise the importance of safeguarding forests in general, according to the World Bank, with recently updated forest policy and tax systems.

In Hlanzoun, the state “must act quickly” said Bodjrenou, and “support forest communities so that they can continue to make profit… but in a different way” by developing agriculture, trade and sustainable tourism.

Mushrooming outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant prompted China and Australia to impose stricter Covid-19 restrictions on Saturday as the WHO urged the world to quickly contain the mutation before it turns into something deadlier and draws out the pandemic.

China’s most serious surge of coronavirus infections in months spread to two more areas Saturday — Fujian province and the sprawling megacity of Chongqing.

More than 200 cases have been linked to a Delta cluster in Nanjing city where nine cleaners at an international airport tested positive, with the outbreak spanning Beijing, Chongqing and five provinces as of Saturday. 

The nation where the disease first emerged has rushed to prevent the highly transmissible strain from taking root by putting more than one million people under lockdown and reinstituting mass testing campaigns. 

Worldwide, coronavirus infections are once again on the upswing, with the World Health Organization announcing an 80 percent average increase over the past four weeks in five of the health agency’s six regions, a jump largely fuelled by the Delta variant. 

First detected in India, it has now reached 132 countries and territories.

“Delta is a warning: it’s a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference. 

He stressed that the “game plan” still works, namely physical distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene and vaccination.

But both high- and low-income countries are struggling to gain the upper hand against Delta, with the vastly unequal sprint for shots leaving plenty of room for variants to wreak havoc and further evolve. 

In Australia, where only about 14 percent of the population is jabbed, the third-largest city of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland state were to enter a snap Covid-19 lockdown Saturday as a cluster of the Delta variant bubbled into six new cases.

“The only way to beat the Delta strain is to move quickly, to be fast and to be strong,” Queensland’s Deputy Premier Steven Miles said while informing millions they will be under three days of strict stay-at-home orders.

‘The war has changed’

The race for vaccines to triumph over variants appeared to suffer a blow as the US Centers for Disease Control released an analysis that found fully immunised people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant can spread the disease as easily as unvaccinated people. 

While the jabs remain effective against severe disease and death, the US government agency said in a leaked internal CDC document “the war has changed” as a result of Delta.

An analysis of a superspreading event in the northeastern state of Massachusetts found three-quarters of the people sickened were vaccinated, according to a report the CDC published Friday.

The outbreak related to July 4 festivities, with the latest number of people infected swelling to 900, according to local reports. The findings were used to justify a return to masks for vaccinated people in high-risk areas.

“As a vaccinated person, if you have one of these breakthrough infections, you may have mild symptoms, you may have no symptoms, but based on what we’re seeing here you could be contagious to other people,” Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases physician and professor at New York University, told AFP.

According to the leaked CDC document, a review of findings from other countries showed that while the original SARS-CoV-2 was as contagious as the common cold, each person with Delta infects on average eight others, making it as transmissible as chickenpox but still less than measles.

Reports from Canada, Scotland and Singapore suggest Delta infections may also be more severe, resulting in more hospitalisations.

Asked if Americans should expect new recommendations from health authorities or new restrictive measures, US President Joe Biden responded, “in all probability,” before leaving the White House by helicopter for the weekend.

He did not specify what steps could be taken.

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US President Joe Biden said on Friday “in all probability” new guidelines or restrictions would be imposed in the United States in response to a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.

Asked if Americans should expect new recommendations from health authorities or new restrictive measures, the president responded, “in all probability,” before leaving the White House by helicopter for the weekend.

He did not specify what steps could be taken. 

US federal authorities, local officials and businesses have boosted health protocols in recent days in the face of surging cases spurred by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. 

Biden added, however, that the country had had “a good day” on Thursday in terms of vaccinations. 

“Almost a million people got vaccinated,” he said, as his administration works to revive a sluggish inoculation campaign. 

“I am hopeful people are beginning to realize how essential it is.”

US health authorities this week recommended that even vaccinated Americans again wear masks indoors in areas with high infection rates.

The federal government has also tightened health regulations for its millions of employees, who must now either be vaccinated or wear masks and be tested regularly, even in areas with low case numbers. 

Hundreds of thousands of people in China were in lockdown on Friday as the country battled its worst Covid-19 outbreak in months, while Japan — a week into the Olympics — extended its state of emergency due to surging infections.

The average number of new daily cases globally jumped by 10 percent over the last week, according to an AFP tally, largely due to the highly contagious Delta variant, after slowing between late April and mid-June.

While the Asia-Pacific region has been hard-hit — with Vietnam and Japan recording a 61 percent jump in daily cases — Western countries are also facing surges, with the US and Canada seeing 57 percent more infections.

The World Health Organization has warned that the Delta variant, first detected in India, could unleash more outbreaks in a high-risk zone stretching from Morocco to Pakistan where vaccination rates are low.

In China, a cluster of infections in Nanjing city linked to airport workers who cleaned a plane from Russia earlier this month had reached Beijing and five provinces by Friday.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been locked down in Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital, while 41,000 came under stay-at-home orders in Beijing’s Changping district.

– Manila misery –

The Philippines, which has closed its airport to most international travel for months, will send more than 13 million people in the national capital region back into lockdown next week because of a Delta-linked increase, the government said Friday.

And Japan extended a virus state of emergency in Tokyo and expanded the measure to four more regions after new cases topped 10,000 for the first time on Thursday.

Japan’s case figures remain small compared to many places, with 3,300 new infections reported in Tokyo on Friday, but experts say the medical system is already at risk of being overwhelmed with only around a quarter of the population fully vaccinated.

The record cases come as Tokyo hosts the Olympics, where organisers on Friday reported 27 new cases related to the event — the highest daily figure yet.

Australia said it would not reopen borders and end lockdowns until vaccination rates reach 80 percent.

– Nastier variants –

In Germany, the government tightened restrictions on unvaccinated people entering the country, “regardless of whether they come by plane, car or train”, Health Minister Jens Spahn said.

Governments of other wealthy countries have amplified efforts to get more of their populations to accept jabs.

Bolstering their case, new research shows that relaxing anti-virus measures before an entire population is vaccinated greatly enhances the risk of more resistant variants evolving. 

At a time when nearly 60 percent of Europeans have received at least one vaccine dose, the authors said their study showed the need to maintain non-vaccination measures until everyone is fully jabbed.

“Delta is a warning: it’s a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan said. 

– Kenya curfew –

More than four billion doses of vaccines have now been administered across the globe, according to AFP data.

High-income countries gave out an average of 97 shots per 100 inhabitants compared with just 1.6 in low-income nations.

Kenya, where only 1.7 million shots have been given to the population of 52 million, on Friday extended a nighttime curfew and banned public gatherings after a surge in Delta cases.

Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe said hospitals were becoming overwhelmed.

“If you fall sick today, you will not get a hospital bed,” Kagwe said. “I am not scaring you, I am telling you the reality.”

To help fill the vaccine gap, rich countries are stepping up donations to the less wealthy.

The US sent three million Moderna doses to Uzbekistan and one million doeses to Tunisia on Friday, following a delivery of 1.5 million Moderna jabs to neighbouring Tajikistan earlier this week.

Even while many of the world’s poorest are yet to receive a first dose, Israel on Friday began rolling out a third booster dose for over-60s.

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NASA did not violate regulations when it decided to give SpaceX the sole contract to build a Moon lander, a watchdog said Friday, in a ruling that denied challenges by competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics.

The human landing system (HLS) contract, worth $2.9 billion, was given to Elon Musk’s company in April, but was protested by the other bidders, who argued NASA was required to make multiple awards and that the evaluation process was unfair. 

The Government Accountability Office said NASA’s initial announcement “reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all,” adding that the space agency had acted in accordance with the level of funding it had.

The finding is a blow in particular to Blue Origin, which was seen as the second strongest bid. 

Blue Origin’s owner Jeff Bezos this week wrote an open letter to NASA offering a discount amounting to at least $2 billion to reconsider the decision.

On Friday, Blue Origin said it believed the GAO wasn’t able to address “fundamental issues” with the original decision because of its limited jurisdiction.

“We’ll continue to advocate for two immediate providers as we believe it is the right solution,” said a spokesperson.

“The Human Landing System program needs to have competition now instead of later — that’s the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country.”

Since losing the award, Blue Origin has strongly lobbied to have the decision reversed, leading the US Senate to pass a bill agreeing to add $10 billion funding to the program.

But the legislation is still being debated in the House of Representatives, and has been branded a “Bezos Bailout” by critics.

SpaceX’s winning bid involves a lunar version of its prototype Starship spacecraft, which is being developed to carry large crews and cargo for deep space voyages, and land upright both on Earth and other celestial bodies.

Under the Artemis program, NASA is planning to return humans to the Moon in the middle of this decade and build a lunar orbital station, before a crewed mission is sent to Mars in the 2030s.

Musk’s company, founded in 2002, is currently NASA’s leading private sector partner. 

It began operating Crew Dragon capsules to take astronauts to the International Space Station last year, while its competitor in that sector, Boeing, has yet to launch a successful uncrewed test flight.

Last week, SpaceX was awarded the contract to launch a planned NASA mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, where a probe will look for signs of life.

A British court on Friday overturned government approval for the construction of a controversial road tunnel close to the Stonehenge stone circle, following opposition from historians, archaeologists and druids.

The ruling came after UNESCO confirmed that the prehistoric site would be added to its “in danger” list if the project went ahead and warned it could lose its World Heritage Site status.

The High Court ruled in favour of a judicial review and threw out consent for the road-building project given by the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, in November 2020.

Those opposed to the plan, including an umbrella group called the Stonehenge Alliance, had warned against the massive engineering project in an area full of archaeological treasures around the standing stones, with the road tunnel starting and ending within the site.

Druids who revere the mystical monument as sacred also protested against the scheme.

“Incredible news. Hugs all around,” the Stonehenge Alliance tweeted after the ruling.

Highways England had applied for permission in 2018 to build a new 13-kilometre section of an existing main road, including a new 3.3 kilometre tunnel. 

The road would cross the UNESCO World Heritage site.

Historian Tom Holland, who has campaigned against the plan, tweeted that the decision was “wonderful news”.

“Hoping the Government will accept this ruling, & save the £2 billion of taxpayers’ money they were planning to blow on a shameful act of desecration,” he added.

Highways England tweeted that it was “hugely disappointed by the decision”.

It said it would now have to wait while the Department for Transport “considers its options”.

Shapps last year opted to ignore the advice of a panel of expert planning inspectors who recommended refusing the application. He said the benefits of the scheme outweighed its disadvantages.

The court stressed that its ruling was not on the merits of the scheme, but on the legality of the minister’s granting of approval.

It ruled that Shapps was not given “legally sufficient material” to allow him to assess the impact of the scheme on individual elements of the heritage site.

It also ruled that Shapps and the panel of planners did not consider two alternative options as they were legally obliged to do: a longer tunnel that would start and end outside the World Heritage Site and adding a cover to the sections of open road in the proposed scheme.

Hundreds of thousands of people in China were in lockdown on Friday as the country battled its worst Covid-19 outbreak in months, while Japan — a week into the Olympics — extended its state of emergency due to surging infections.

The average number of new daily cases globally jumped by 10 percent over the last week, according to an AFP tally, largely due to the highly contagious Delta variant, after slowing between late April and mid-June.

While the Asia-Pacific region has been hard-hit — with Vietnam and Japan recording a 61 percent jump in daily cases — Western countries are also facing surges, with the US and Canada seeing 57 percent more infections.

The World Health Organization has warned that the Delta variant, first detected in India, could unleash more Covid-19 outbreaks in a high-risk zone stretching from Morocco to Pakistan where vaccination rates are low

In China, a cluster of infections in Nanjing city linked to airport workers who cleaned a plane from Russia earlier this month had reached Beijing and five provinces by Friday.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been locked down in Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital, while 41,000 came under stay-at-home orders in Beijing’s Changping district.

– Manila misery –

The Philippines, which has closed its airport to most international travel for months, will send more than 13 million people in the national capital region back into lockdown next week because of a Delta-linked increase, the government said Friday.

And Japan extended a virus state of emergency in Tokyo and expanded the measure to four more regions after new cases topped 10,000 for the first time on Thursday.

Japan’s case figures remain small compared to many places, with 3,300 new infections reported in Tokyo on Friday, but experts say the medical system is already at risk of being overwhelmed with only around a quarter of the population fully vaccinated.

The record cases come as Tokyo hosts the Olympics, where organisers on Friday reported 27 new cases related to the event — the highest daily figure yet.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Japan and the International Olympic Committee had done “their best to minimise risk, because nobody should expect zero risk”.

Meanwhile, Australia said on Friday it would not reopen borders and end lockdowns until vaccination rates reach 80 percent.

– Nastier variants –

In Germany, the government tightened restrictions on unvaccinated people entering the country, “regardless of whether they come by plane, car or train”, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Friday.

Governments of other wealthy countries have amplified efforts to get more of their populations to accept jabs.

Bolstering their case, new research shows that relaxing anti-virus measures before an entire population is vaccinated greatly enhances the risk of more resistant variants evolving. 

At a time when nearly 60 percent of Europeans have received at least one vaccine dose, the authors said their study showed the need to maintain non-vaccination measures until everyone is fully jabbed. 

The report by Austria’s Institute of Science and Technology showed that the highest risk of resistant strains emerging came when a large proportion of the population was vaccinated, but not large enough to ensure herd immunity.

Still, tightening measures risks snuffing out the eurozone’s nascent economic recovery.

The zone’s economy expanded by two percent in the second quarter, with some of the biggest rebounds in Italy and Spain, the countries worst hit by the first wave of the pandemic. Portugal posted a stellar 4.9 percent growth.

– Kenya curfew –

More than four billion doses of vaccines have now been administered across the globe, according to AFP data.

High-income countries gave out an average of 97 shots per 100 inhabitants compared with just 1.6 in low-income nations.

Kenya, where only 1.7 million shots have been given to the population of 52 million, on Friday extended a nighttime curfew and banned public gatherings after a surge in Delta cases.

Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe said hospitals were becoming overwhelmed.

“If you fall sick today, you will not get a hospital bed,” Kagwe said. “I am not scaring you, I am telling you the reality.”

To help fill the vaccine gap, rich countries are stepping up donations to the less wealthy.

The US on Friday sent three million Moderna doses to Uzbekistan, following a delivery of 1.5 million Moderna jabs to neighbouring Tajikistan earlier this week.

Even while many of the world’s poorest are yet to receive a first dose, Israel on Friday began rolling out a third booster dose for over-60s.

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Turkish firefighters made progress Friday containing deadly wildfires that forced the evacuation of entire villages and Mediterranean coast hotels already reeling from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic.

Blazes that erupted Wednesday to the east of tourist hotspot Antalya on Turkey’s scenic southern shores have officially killed four people and injured nearly 200.

But they have also threatened to scare off tourists who had only just started to return to Turkey in what President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had hoped would be a boon for the developing country’s fragile economy.

The soaring flames turned summer skies blood orange over luxury hotels and villages dotting rolling hills that have been parched by another dry summer.

They had spread by Thursday evening to the Aegean Sea on Turkey’s western coast and spanned a region stretching 300 kilometres (185 miles) and covering most of the country’s top resorts.

Local resident Gulen Dede Tekin came to a five-star hotel in the coastal city of Marmaris on Thursday morning and at first thought nothing of the fires raging beyond the hills.

“In the evening, we realised how serious things were when they cut off the electricity and the ventilation at the hotel,” Tekin told AFP.

“This morning, we woke up to a rain of ash.”

– Arrests –

The government said 57 of the 71 fires had been contained or entirely put out by Friday.

“The situation is improving in all active fires,” Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli told reporters during a visit to the affected region.

But he also confirmed that Turkey no longer had a firefighting plane in its inventory and was only in the process of acquiring one under orders from Erdogan.

Russia has sent three giant aircraft and Turkey’s historic rival Greece — at odds with its neighbour on a wide range of disputes — said it was “ready to help”.

Turkey’s regional allies Ukraine and Azerbaijan also announced they were sending planes and other help.

The blow the fires threaten to deal to Turkey’s tourism-dependent economy and the admission that the country had no firefighting planes has put Erdogan’s government under pressure.

His office has officially blamed arson and unspecified “attacks”.

Erdogan told reporters after Friday prayer that his opponents were trying to score political points by questioning the government’s preparedness for the crisis.

“While our country is burning, they are playing politics,” he said.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced the arrest of five people on suspicion of starting one of the blazes.

“Who started these fires,” he asked in televised comments during a visit to Manavgat. “We, as well as our citizens, have our suspicions.”

But the blame on arsonists — which government media has linked to banned Kurdish militants waging an insurgency against the Turkish state — has created a febrile atmosphere in some of the most badly damaged regions.

Turkish television showed an angry mob of a few dozen men being restrained by the police on Thursday night as they tried to attack two locals they held responsible for blazes in the town of Manavgat.

The private DHA news agency said two children — one eight and the other 10 years old — had also admitted under questioning in the presence of their teacher that they accidentally started one of the fires by burning their books.

Scientists working to bring back the functionally extinct northern white rhino announced they had successfully created three additional embryos of the subspecies, bringing the total to 12. 

One of world’s two remaining live specimens — female Fatu who lives with her mother Najin on Kenya’s 90,000-acre Ol Pejeta wildlife conservancy — provided the eggs for the project, while the sperm used was from two different deceased males. 

Scientific consortium Biorescue described in a press release late Thursday how the eggs were collected from Fatu in early July before being airlifted to a lab in Italy for fertilisation, development and preservation.

Neither Fatu nor Najin is capable of carrying a calf to term, so surrogate mothers for the embryos will be selected from a population of southern white rhinos.

Ol Pejeta director Richard Vigne told AFP on Friday that he believed in the project’s chances of success, while emphasising the high stakes.

“No one is going to pretend that this is going to be easy,” he said.

“We are doing things which are cutting-edge from a scientific perspective and we a dealing with genetics, with the two last northen white rhinos left on the planet,” said Vigne. 

“There are many, many things that could go wrong,” he said. “I think everybody understand the challenges that remain.”

Since 2019 Biorescue has collected 80 eggs from Najin and Fatu, but the 12 viable embryos all hail from the younger rhino.

The project is a multi-national effort with scientists from the German Leibniz Institute backing the Kenya Wildlife Service and Ol Pejeta, and the Italian Avantea laboratory providing fertilisation support.

Kenyan Tourism Minister Najib Balala welcomed the news.

“It is very encouraging to note that the project has continued to make good progress in its ambitious attempts to save an iconic species from extinction,” he said in the press release.

Rhinoceroses have very few natural predators but their numbers have been decimated by poaching since the 1970s.

Modern rhinos have roamed the planet for 26 million years and it is estimated that more than a million still lived in the wild in the middle of the 19th century.