Species profile
Diceros bicornis
Black rhinoceros
This is a curated published estimate, not a live census. Estimates may refer to mature individuals, wild individuals or a documented range and are not directly comparable between species.
CR · Critically Endangered — Critically Endangered — extreme risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Critically Endangered. A black rhino's horn is solid keratin — the same material as your fingernails — yet poaching for it has driven the species to the edge of extinction. Its recorded population direction is increasing. That is encouraging, but it does not remove continuing pressures or make every population secure.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with terrestrial, savanna. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Despite their bulk, black rhinos can sprint at 50 km/h and are surprisingly agile on rough terrain. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
Black rhinos are browsers with a hooked upper lip made for plucking twigs and leaves — the white rhino's square lip, by contrast, is a grass lawnmower. The catalogue records 3 principal pressures for this profile: Poaching, Horn trafficking, Habitat loss. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Protecting and reconnecting habitat is a priority, together with infrastructure planning that keeps feeding, breeding or migration routes functional. Direct protection needs to combine enforcement with conflict prevention, demand reduction and local benefits that make coexistence viable. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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