Southern Africa is home to 22,137 of the world’s 23,432 white and black African rhinos. But they’re facing grave threats because of a warming planet. Now, the first study of how climate change affects rhinos in southern Africa has found that they will cease to exist in the region’s national parks by 2085 if the world takes the worst-case scenario climate change pathway. Timothy Randhir, who has been an ecological economist for 47 years, explains what governments and parks can do to prevent this from happening.
Why are rhinos in danger of being wiped out?
Rhinos cannot sweat. If they want to cool their large bodies down in the heat, they need to consume a lot of water. They also rely on wallowing in water holes and resting in the shade. As Earth heats up, rhinos will only survive if they have more opportunities to cool down.
How did you calculate that rhinos will not survive the worst scenario?
We looked back in history to see how rhinos lived in southern Africa, and in one park in Kenya. We looked at the temperature and rainfall averages in each of the best locations for rhinos, and then we mapped out the extremes. This defined the climatic domain and gave us a macroecological perspective (where we do not look at one specific site but look at the larger picture of how temperature and rain influence the behaviour of rhinos).
