The Cameroon government, World Wildlife Fund, and World Conservation Union (IUCN) are planning a rescue mission to save the last 10 Western black rhinos in Africa. Western black rhinos are a subspecies of the African black rhino, one of the last four rhino species on the continent; three other rhino species have already gone extinct. As recently as the early 1980s, Western black rhinos numbered 3,000, but since then poaching has caused the population to plummet. The rhinos’ horns are prized in Asia for their medicinal properties. Conservationists hope to bring the population up to 50 by mid-century. In other endangered species news, scientists in Worcester, Mass., are eagerly awaiting the birth of the first cloned endangered species — a wild ox native to Southeast Asia called a gaur. Bessie the cow would be the proud surrogate mother.
