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Environment Biodiversity
Class 8 Intermediate About 12 min Premium

Saving the one-horned rhino

Follow 100 one-horned rhinos for 20 years. Protect them in a national park, add community guards, or let their forest be cut and poachers hunt them, and watch their numbers rise or fall.

Core concept

An endangered species can recover when its habitat is protected and hunting stops; losing habitat and poaching can wipe it out

Topic: Biodiversity

The one-horned rhinoceros once lived across the Terai. By 1968, forests had been cut for farms and poachers killed rhinos for their horns, until only about 100 were left in Chitwan. The rhino was endangered: in danger of dying out for ever. Nepal made Chitwan a national park in 1973, protected the grasslands, and the army and local communities began to guard the rhinos. The population grew again, to more than 750 rhinos in Nepal today. In this lab you start with 100 rhinos and see how their numbers change in 20 years with different protection and different amounts of poaching.

Key words explained

What you will learn

  • Explain what an endangered species is, with examples from Nepal.
  • Describe how habitat protection helps a population grow.
  • Explain how poaching can make a population die out.
  • Describe how communities and national parks help conservation.

Before you start

  • Know that animals need a habitat with food, water and shelter.

Materials

  • A map of Nepal's national parks

Equipment

  • A calculator or spreadsheet to check the numbers

Procedure

  1. Protect the 100 rhinos in a national park with no poaching and record after 20 years.
  2. Remove all protection and record after 20 years.
  3. In the park, let 5 rhinos a year be poached and record after 20 years.
  4. With no protection and 5 poached a year, find when they are all gone.
  5. Add community guards with only 2 poached a year and record after 20 years.

How this simulation is simplified

  • The population starts at 100 rhinos.
  • Each year the population changes by a share that depends on protection: −2% when the forest is cut, +4% in a national park and +5% with community guards as well.
  • Poachers kill the same number of rhinos every year; the numbers are rounded to whole rhinos.
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