GLAND, Switzerland, July 13 (UPI) -- The World Conservation Union says the West African black rhinoceros might be extinct and Africa's northern white rhino might soon follow.
Richard Emslie of the World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission told BBC News experts searched 1,200 miles of habitat in northern Cameroon but failed to find any sign of the West African black rhino.
"They looked for spoor (tracks or droppings), they looked for the rhino's characteristic way of feeding, which has an effect like a pruning shear," Emslie, a rhino expert based in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa, told the news service.
Although not discovering any sign of black rhinos, the experts did come across much of evidence of poaching.
Poachers have long hunted the animals for their horns, which are used in traditional Asian medicine to fight malaria, epilepsy and other ailments. In Yemen the horns are in demand for use as carved handles on traditional daggers, National Geographic News said.
Conservationists estimated there were more than 100,000 West African black rhinos in 1960. That figure dropped to an estimated 14,000 by 1980 and now the animals might be extinct.
