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The Javan rhino: about 50 left, all in one forest

In just a few years, poachers wiped out about a third of the Javan rhinos left on Earth.

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The real story

Javan rhinos once lived from north-east India through Myanmar, Thailand, Indochina and Sumatra to Java. The last one in Vietnam was killed by poachers in 2010. That left a single population in Ujung Kulon National Park, at the western tip of Java. The forest there is partly a gift of disaster: after Krakatau erupted in 1883 and its tsunami emptied the coast, the jungle grew back with almost no people in it.

For years camera traps counted about 76 to 80 animals. Then in 2024 Indonesian police broke up a poaching ring that had killed as many as 26 rhinos since 2019, mostly males with bigger horns. In 2025 the IUCN put the population at about 50. Rangers have tightened patrols, and new calves keep turning up on camera, so every birth now matters for the species.

What the narrator says

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The facts we checked

  • The Javan rhino survives only in Ujung Kulon National Park, at the western tip of Java
  • Only about 50 are left (IUCN estimate, 2025, after a wave of poaching), making it one of the rarest large mammals on earth
  • Rangers and hidden camera traps watch over them; the males have a single small horn

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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