Although it is illegal to hunt rhinos, poachers are willing to risk the penalties - a poacher can make more money on a single horn than he can make on a farm in a whole year! In Africa, poaching gangs race into national parks in trucks, kill rhinos with machine guns, take off their horns and escape before the guards can stop them. Many guards and poachers have been killed in such raids.
In Asia, the 3 types of rhinos live in rainforests. Poaching is a problem but also the forest habitat of the rhinos is being destroyed to provide timber or land for building and farming.
Poisoning has been a problem for the Greater one-horned rhino since 1990. In the Chitwan National Park, Nepal, several have been killed by eating green maize cobs treated with a deadly pesticide.
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