Recent reports have sadly confirmed that Vietnam has lost it's Javan Rhinos from the wild. Only one Javan Rhinoceros subspecies individual was known to exist in the entire country (in a national park) but it has sadly been confirmed dead.
Thought to have been killed by poachers, the death of the last remaining wild Javan Rhinoceros in Vietnam is not only devastating from both an ecological and a cultural point of view, but it also means the extinction of an entire Rhinoceros subspecies.
In recent years, the growing reports of Rhino poaching in Africa has led to great concerns over the future of Rhinos as the demand for their horns on the Asian medicine market appears to remain a growing concern, and one which has now eradicated an entire animal species in Vietnam.
Large mammals would have once roamed throughout the entire country but today are either rare (or extinct) due to not only the poaching of them for their horns but also from habitat loss, primarily in the form of deforestation or urbanisation.
The Javan Rhinoceros is the most Critically Endangered large mammal on the planet with less than 50 individuals left in the wild, that are only found in a remote corner of the Indonesian Island of Java. They are now the only remaining species of Javan Rhinoceros.