Janjaweed driving white rhinos to extinction

"I do not believe that any rhinos will survive the year," predicted Thomas J. Foose, program director at the International Rhino Foundation, which is based in the United States and has been working for years in Garamba, the last refuge for the northern white rhino. The immediate culprits, according to conservation groups, are poachers from an offshoot of the janjaweed, the Arab militia groups that have been pillaging villages in the Darfur region of Sudan. Rather than attacking people, these militias are on a mission to make money. They steal over the border to kill elephants and rhinos, leaving the carcasses and taking the valuable tusks and horns. But the greatest threat to the rhinos is political, specifically a growing Congolese nationalism that has undercut protection efforts, including a last-ditch program to move five of the remaining animals to safety in Kenya.