This particular issue features The Rhino.  The situation facing African rhinoceroses is still critical. The international horn trade ban and the domestic bans imposed in most traditional user states, have driven the trade further ‘underground,’ in some cases inflating prices and making illegal dealing even more lucrative. The demand for horn from Asia (for traditional medicines) and from the Middle East (for dagger handles) persists and the threat of a return to large-scale poaching is ever present. Wars, civil unrest, poverty, influxes of refugees, and internal corruption within many African states combine so that poachers usually escape arrest and poverty-stricken people become poachers to survive.

The rhinoceros is a large, primitive-looking mammal that has been roaming this planet for millions of years.  There are two species of Rhino in Africa: the white or square-lipped rhino and the black, or hooked-lipped, rhino.  The black rhino is usually solitary. The white rhino tends to be much more gregarious. Rhinos are also rather ill-tempered and have become more so in areas where they have been constantly disturbed. While their eyesight is poor, which is probably why they will sometimes charge without apparent reason, their sense of smell and hearing are very good. They have an extended "vocabulary" of growls, grunts, squeaks, snorts and bellows. When attacking, the rhino lowers its head, snorts, breaks into a gallop reaching speeds of 30 miles an hour, and gores or strikes powerful blows with its horns. Still, for all its bulk, the rhino is very agile and can quickly turn in a small space. The rhino has a symbiotic relationship with oxpeckers, also called tick birds. In Swahili the tick bird is named "askari wa kifaru," meaning "the rhino's guard." The bird eats ticks it finds on the rhino and noisily warns of danger.