The western black rhinoceros is declared extinct

On 10 November 2011 the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced that the western black rhinoceros, a subspecies of the black rhino living in the savannahs of Cameroon and the surrounding region of Central Africa, was extinct. Intensive surveys in 2006 had found no trace of the animal. Poachers had killed them for their horns, which sell for more than their weight in gold on the black market of Asia for use in traditional medicine and as status symbols, and the last known animals disappeared in the early 2000s. Other rhino subspecies remain under severe threat, though conservation has helped the southern white rhino recover.

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