PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2015-04-14 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Is the Western Black Rhino Extinct? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • In April 2015, users of social media sites lamented news that the western black rhino had been officially declared extinct. The photograph shown above was appended to many posts about that species of rhinoceros, often shared from the Facebook page of Atlanta television station WXIA. It is true that the western black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis longipes) has been declared extinct. However, most social media posts shared in April 2015 referenced that status as a sudden and recent occurrence, when in fact the decline of the western black rhino was not sudden, nor was the determination of the species' extinction a recent occurrence. However, people seem to frequently forget that the western black rhino has been gone for years, and intermittently discover the news to mourn anew. In 2011 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the western black rhino extinct: Although many people who shared photographs of the western black rhino in 2015 believed that the last remaining rhino's death caused the declaration, that determination was made in a far less dramatic and sudden fashion. By the year 2000 only ten western black rhinos remained, a number that dropped by half in a single year. Experts concluded in 2006 that the species was all but certainly extinct: In November 2011, Scientific American carried news of the western black rhino's confirmed extinction: News of the extinction circulated two years later (in November 2013), during which time an article in the same publication explained the longer arc of the rhinos' fate: At that time, WXIA-TV also republished a CNN report that the Western Black Rhino had been officially declared extinct. But while Internet users lamented the news in 2011, 2013, and again 2015, the western black rhino's extinction was first noted in 2006. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url