Rhinos, are a throwback from a forgotten era.

They are highly evolved, actually, for their time, because they got to a point when as adults, they didn't really have natural predators anymore.

Markus Hofmeyr is the director of the Rhino Recovery fund, a group established by the Wildlife Conservation Network with the goal of protecting rhinos from wildlife crime and restoring their natural landscapes.

The northern white rhino sustained larger numbers until about the 1980s, and that coincided with a lot of civil wars.

Weapons were flowing into these countries, and because of the value of the rhino horn, that was a commodity that could be used to trade for weapons and ammunition or fuel or whatever.

And then more or less, by the late 1990s, all the northern white rhinos in the world had disappeared.

While many groups actively work to protect all species of rhino.

There are still dangers surrounding rhino populations, including climate change and poaching.

So what's being done about this problem?

One of the short term methods of protecting rhinos is to cut their horns off.

So you take away the asset.

In Asia, we'd like to see the greater one-horned rhino being put into more parks and more sites where they've historically used to occur, and pushing back on the development agenda and creating larger landscapes that they could even be connected with each other.

Despite its strength and ability to survive very easily on its own, it's got no defenses against us humans, particularly bad intended humans.

So we as a species, have to make the actual decision that we want the species to exist into the future, because it's through our own decision making, our own protection and our own approaches, that we will then protect rhinos from criminals.

Putting money into the Rhino Recovery Fund, We want to make it a symbol of hope for the rhino, for people and for landscapes.

That's what we want to try and achieve.

To learn more about how we can protect the future of rhinos, visit norcalpublicmedia.org/wildlife