Global March for Elephants and Rhinos
On October 4th people in cities throughout the world will march as one voice to save Elephants and Rhinos. The countdown to their extinction has begun.
Unless action is taken now, we will lose these majestic, highly intelligent, and emotionally sentient creatures FOREVER.
More than 35,000 elephants are being killed every year so their tusks can be carved into ivory trinkets. A rhino is slaughtered once every 9-11 hours for its horn. Their only hope for survival lies in an immediate end to the ivory and rhino horn trade (both "legal" and "illegal") and the chance to recover from decades of mass slaughter.
Please join the global march to call for an end to the killing and a ban on ivory and rhino horn before it's too late. Email us at march4elesandrhinos@gmail.com with any questions.
I hope you won't mind a reprise of this diary that I published in 2011. I think it quite apt considering today's activities.Today the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos takes place across the world. Please visit
noweaselscall to march in her diary
Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Has Begun
This is a story that begins in the mists of time. A comedy of life that now, I fear, will end in tragedy.
Some 56 million years or so ago the ancestors of today's rhinoceros started their long evolutionary saga. This was the time when the family of perissodactyls (odd-toed ungulates) evolved and diversified with the slow inherent changes of nature into the varied environments to become today's horses (Equidae), tapirs (Tapiridae) and, of course, rhinoceros (Rhinocerotidae). Yet now, after all those long years, they face an environment that is decidedly unnatural.
As a boy I found rhinoceros even more fascinating than dinosaurs. The beasts seemed both ancient and alien to me when I saw them for the first time at the Brookfield Zoo so many years ago. The Indian wearing its suit armour and the huge African White piqued my pre-adolescent interest, but it was their horn(s) that I found most intriguing and therein lies the rub.
The reported extinction on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species of the Western Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis longipes), a sub-species of the Africa's Black or Hook-Lipped Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) was very upsetting news for me. I'm sure I am not alone. The truly heartbreaking thing is that, according to the Wikipedia, there are no Western Black Rhinoceros in captivity. We've lost them forever. So I worried and wondered, "What of the remaining rhinoceros? Will their long journey in time and space end during my own brief sojourn on Earth?"
The sad news set me on a quest. It's been some time since I studied these amazing animals and when I did there were no series of tubes. It wasn't long, back then, before I'd exhausted natural history books at the local library because of my interest in these animals. So now, once again, I turned my curiosity to these creatures and their future. So off I went, thither and yon, to find out more about these beautiful beasties.
Two Black Rhinoceros at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya
(the video mis-identifies the species)
Take the jump if you're curious too...