Precarious

Precarious

10×14 watercolor enhanced colored pencil. Original unavailable.

For most of the 20th century the continental black rhino was the most numerous of all rhino species. Around 1900 there were probably several hundred thousand living in Africa. During the later half of the 20th century their number severely reduced from an estimated 70,000 in the late 1960s to only 10,000 to 15,000 in 1981. In the early 1990s the number dipped below 2500, and in 2004 it was reported that only 2,410 black rhinos remained. According to the International Rhino Foundation, the total African population has since then slightly recovered to 3,610 by 2003. According to a July 2006 report by the World Conservation Union, a recent survey of the West African Black Rhino, which once ranged across the savannahs of western Africa but had dropped to just 10, concluded the subspecies to be extinct. The northern white is soon to join the western black rhino on the extinction list as its last noted numbers were as few as 4. The only rhino that has recovered somewhat from the brink of extinction is the southern white whose numbers now are estimated around 14,500, up from fewer than 50 in the first decade of the 20th Century. The Black Rhinoceros has been pushed to the brink of extinction by illegal poaching for their horn and by loss of habitat. The horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine, and is said by herbalists to be able to revive comatose patients, cure fevers and aid male sexual stamina and fertility. The purported effectiveness of the use of rhino horn in treating any illness has not been confirmed by medical science. In June of 2007, the first-ever documented case of the medicinal sale of black rhino horn in the United States (confirmed by genetic testing of the confiscated horn) occurred at a Traditional Chinese Medicine supply store in Portland, Oregon’s Chinatown. It is used in the Middle East to make ornately carved handles for ceremonial daggers called jambiyas. Demand for these exploded in the 1970s causing the Black Rhinoceros population to decline 96% between 1970 and 1992.

To say that this was time consuming would be an understatement. The wrinkles were enough to almost drive me batty.. but I managed to finish this one.. on to the elephant!!

Complete 2008

Precarious belongs to the following groups:

# 1 ARTISTS OF REDBUBBLE , ! 100% !, All Animals Great And Small., Endangered Species, Exotic Mammals, Realist Traditional Art and Zoophoria (2 per day, approval required) Available for sale as

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