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(NEW YORK) — Climbing Mount Everest is one of the most difficult feats known to humankind, but the treacherous expedition is getting even more challenging due to climate change, according to experts.

Warming temperatures around the globe are making both the topography of the glaciers in the Himalayas and the weather patterns mountaineers rely on to plan the timing of their journeys more unpredictable, climbing experts and climatologists told ABC News.

A record number of people died while attempting to climb Mount Everest this year. While the Nepalese government blamed climate change for the extraordinary number of deaths, experts say global warming may not be entirely responsible.

This is how climate change is affecting climbing in the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain ranges:

The topography of the glaciers, mountains are less reliable

Research in recent years has overwhelmingly shown that glaciers in the Himalayas are thinning, Joseph Shea, an associate professor of environmental geomatics at the University of Northern British Columbia, told ABC News. Climate change is roasting the Himalaya region, causing glaciers to retreat and permafrost to melt, according to a 2019 report authored by Shea.

Several of the routes that climbers use to gain access to higher peaks rely on the stability of glaciers, such as the Khumbu Icefall, located near the Everest base camp and used to trek up to Camp 1, Shea said.

“The Khumbu Icefall, which is already really difficult to navigate, that becomes less reliable,” said Shea, who was been researching the Himalayas since 2012.

Researchers have drilled into the Khumbu Glacier near the Everest base camp and found that it is “very close to the melting point,” Duncan Quincey, a professor of glaciology at the University of Leeds, told ABC News.

With just a small increase in atmospheric temperatures, the Khumbu Glacier won’t be far from being in a scenario where it will start to melt rapidly, Quincey said.

Climate change can also exacerbate other risks like rockfall events, especially in the high mountain areas because many of the formations in the highest levels are held together by alpine permafrost, or frozen ground that then thaws, Shea said.

Before the region began to warm rapidly, climbers could have more confidence in passing some of these treacherous areas because everything was “very much frozen” and much more stable, Quincey said.

Many of the slopes are becoming exposed for the first time, and rock avalanche events will be increasingly unpredictable, Quincey said.

Snow and ice avalanches in the Himalayas are also increasing risks for climbers as global temperatures warm, a study published in the European Geosciences Union in July found.

“And as we go forward, I think we can expect the whole region to become a lot more hazardous,” Quincey said.

Everest’s perfect weather window is becoming more unpredictable

Weather patterns in the region are also becoming more erratic, making it difficult for climbers to plan safe expeditions from more than a few days out, research shows.

Everest experts know that there is a “magical” window in May in which the winds die down below 30 mph, typically between May 15 and May 30, Chris Tomer, a Colorado-based meteorologist and weather forecaster for mountaineering expeditions, told ABC News.

The window tends to appear as the monsoon season approaches and the jet stream, an area of high wind that typically sits on the summit, gets pushed off, allowing the winds in the region to drop dramatically and improving conditions for climbing, Tomer said. But that timing has been changing.

Typically, if winds are above 30 mph, most people will not climb, Alan Arnette, a seasoned mountaineer who is the oldest American to climb K2 at 58 years old, told ABC News.

“It’s just too dangerous, and it increases the chance of frostbite and other problems,” he said.

“What I’ve noticed is that it’s become a little bit harder to predict, and it’s a little bit more erratic,” Tomer said.

In 2019, there were only three days — as opposed to the typical 11 to 14 days — where winds were suitable for climbing, Arnette said. But in May 2022, nearly the entire month had favorable wind conditions, something that has never happened before, he said.

“That shows you the extremes that are happening,” he said.

It’s not clear what will happen in the future in terms of jetstream position and the timing of the wind switch, Shea said.

While the long-term forecasts for the perfect window may ultimately change in the future, the short-term forecasts will remain accurate, Shea said.

“Once you’re up there, you have to decide if you’re going to make that call to go for it or not,” he said.

Himalayas region a key indicator of climate change

Most glacier mountain regions around the world are exhibiting clear examples of climate change, the experts said.

Research shows that if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced, glaciers will keep losing mass and retreating drastically, Shea said.

“This is a very clear climate change signal,” Shea said. “And models that we use to look at what happens in the future predict the same thing, like big declines in total glacier volumes, glacier extents.”

For those who have studied the region for years, the changes are apparent to the naked eye, including exposed slopes on the flanks of the main glaciers and lakes of water pooling on the ice surfaces that were free of meltwater, Quincey said.

“It’s very, very difficult not to see the impacts of climate change,” Quincey said. “There’s some very clear visual indicators of the impact that climate is having in that region.”

Climate change likely not the culprit for majority of deaths on Everest this year

Seventeen climbers died while trying to Everest this year, an extraordinary figure compared to the average of four to six climbers per season, Arnette said.

While the Nepalese government blamed the steep increase in Everest fatalities on climate change, inexperienced and ill-equipped or unqualified guides is likely to blame for the majority of the deaths, the climbing experts said.

Of the 17 people who died, 11 of the deaths were preventable, Arnette said. Several of the deaths were blamed on natural causes, which is typical, Arnette said.

“It is to be expected that you’re going to have people that are going to die from natural causes when climbing Everest because the lower amount of oxygen, and then the exertion that the body goes through climbing at that altitude is stresses the body,” Arnette said.

The only year that saw just as many deaths was in 2014 when 17 people also died — but the majority of the deaths were sherpas who were killed in a single avalanche.

In addition, there were a record number of climbers in 2023, Shea said, which increased the likelihood of more deaths.

Nepal issued a record 478 climbing permits to foreigners for 2023, Arnette wrote in his blog. When accounting for the number of sherpas accompanying the foreigners, the number jumps to about 1,200 climbers pursuing Everest’s summit over the spring.

The unpredictability of the weather patterns could also lead to overcrowding on the summit. If forecasters can only predict conditions with certainty four or five days out, it forces everybody into a smaller summit window, Tomer said.

“Instead of being able to spread 400 people out over five days, everybody gets crammed into a one or two-day window,” Tomer said.

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(LONDON) — A large explosion has reportedly torn through a fuel store being used by ethnic Armenia refugees amidst their exodus from the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Thousands of ethnic Armenians have started fleeing from Nagorno-Karabakh following Azerbaijan’s successful military offensive to retake control of the region last week.

The explosion occurred at a fuel depot close to the Stepanakert-Askeran highway that leads from the enclave’s capital, according to the enclave’s ethnic Armenian authorities. The explosion caused a large fire, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Local authorities said casualties and injuries were still being recorded, but local media reported it was feared dozens could be dead and injured.

Gas was reportedly being handed out to refugees trying to leave the enclave, that has been suffering fuel shortages.

At least 6,650 people had crossed the border into Armenia by Monday evening, according to an Armenian government statement quoted by the Russian state news agencies, with over three thousand arriving in just several hours.

An adviser to the enclave’s ethnic Armenians leadership on Sunday told Reuters that virtually its entire population — estimated at 120,000 — would now leave. If they stayed, they would be “ethnically cleansed” by Azerbaijan, he said.

“Our people do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan,” David Babayan, the adviser, told Reuters on Sunday. “Ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic lands.”

Reporters on the border reported dozens of civilian cars and other vehicles have been driving to the crossing since Sunday, when Azerbaijan begin permitting some people to exit. Reuters reported that groups of civilians in the region’s capital, called Stepanakert by Armenians, were seen loading and packing belongings onto buses. Armenian authorities said they are prepared for tens of thousands of families to flee.

Azerbaijan has blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh for nine months prior to last week’s offensive and controls the only main route out. On Sunday it allowed the first civilians to leave, reportedly escorted by Russian peacekeepers.

Azerbaijan launched an offensive last week that in just two days of fighting defeated the ethnic Armenia authorities in the enclave, who laid down their arms and agreed to disband their military forces. Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for most of the last 35 years following a bloody war between Armenia and Azerbaijan amid the break up of the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians were also driven out of Karabakh by Armenian forces during the war in the 1990s.

Azerbaijan reopened the conflict in 2020, launching a full-scale war that decisively defeated Armenia and forced its government to largely abandon its claims to it. Last week’s new offensive, that killed and wounded hundreds, finally defeated the enclave’s ethnic Armenian authorities, restoring Azerbaijan’s control.

Amid the crisis, Samantha Power, the head of USAID and a vocal campaigner on human rights, landed in Armenia’s capital on Monday.

“At this important moment for the country and region, I’m here to reiterate the U.S.’s strong support & partnership with Armenia and to speak directly with those impacted by the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Power wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The U.S. and other western countries have expressed concerns for the ethnic Armenians in the enclave, warning Azerbaijan it must ensure their security and rights.

Azerbaijani troops have been halted on the edge of the enclave’s capital since end of the offensive, during which Azerbaijan already seized a number of villages and cut off roads leading to some. Power cuts and shortages of food, medicine and water have been reported, with thousands of displaced people sheltering in the city.

Azerbaijan has said it wants to “reintegrate” the Armenian population but has not presented any plan for doing so or for safeguarding their rights. In areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it has previously retaken, Azerbaijan has encouraged Azerbaijanis to come resettle and some Armenian cultural sites have been erased or damaged.

Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev on Monday hosted Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has strongly backed Azerbaijan, including providing weapons and military advisors. The two met in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan enclave, which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by southern Armenia and that Aliyev has threatened to use force to reconnect with a corridor.

“I am certain that the process of integration of the Armenian population of Karabakh will go successfully,” Aliyev said at the meeting, according to the Russian news agency TASS. He added that all residents of the enclave were “Azerbaijan citizens.”

A second round of talks between Azerbaijan and Karabakh Armenian leadership was held on Monday in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh, in which the sides reportedly discussed establishing facilities for urgent medical in Nagorno-Karabakh.

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(NEW YORK) — No movie can capture the sweat, blood, pain and tears, said Serhiy.

“The scariest things you can imagine and can’t imagine, you find here,” Serhiy, a commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, added.

Amid the destroyed villages and desolate landscape in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are slowly advancing, inch by bloody inch.

It was troops from the 3rd Assault Brigade who spearheaded the final stages of a monthlong operation to recapture the ruined village of Andriivka this month.

The battles in eastern Ukraine are “a living hell,” according to Victoria Torri, a 23-year-old combat medic in the region who only 10 months ago was working as an investment banker in New York.

“You lose someone you know every single day,” she told ABC News, describing the Russian enemy as “a living evil” which is “much bigger than you and has unlimited resources.”

The 3rd Assault brigade is one of Ukraine’s most formidable fighting forces.

It has been at the forefront of steady Ukrainian advances near Bakhmut which, to date, is one of the Ukrainian army’s clearest areas of success since it launched its counteroffensive around four months ago.

During that time Ukrainian forces have not been able to achieve any decisive breakthrough on the battlefield.

Today, Ukrainian commanders a few say they are preparing for a long fight.

The commander of the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade, who goes by the callsign “Rolo” and who planned the successful assault on the village of Andriivka, described the war today as one of “attrition.”

“It’s going to be a long and hard war and we need to get ready for that,” he told ABC News, adding that his Russian enemy was “technologically advanced” and calling Russia’s superiority in the air “a huge problem.”

One soldier warned that Russia has a large stockpile of its feared Lancet explosive attack drones, which have been used to kill Ukrainian forces.

Rolo also said his men had little way of responding to Russia’s advanced Ka-52 “Alligator” attack helicopters, which can fire armor-piercing missiles from a range of several miles.

As Rolo acknowledged, his men are now facing a formidable Russian enemy.

That said, Ukrainian troops stationed to the south and north of Bakhmut have been making slow but steady progress toward encircling the ruined city, which Russia finally captured in May after a year of bitter fighting.

Given the huge losses Russia sustained in the battle for Bakhmut, President Vladimir Putin cannot afford to give the city up and Ukrainian attacks, officials said, have forced the Kremlin to send reinforcements into that area.

The hope is that forcing Russia to commit more resources in the east will help Ukraine on its main axis of attack in the south.

In Ukraine’s Southeasterly Zaporizhzhia region, there are small but significant signs of progress by Ukrainian forces, with a military spokesperson claiming troops are advancing “on some days by 300 to 400 meters.”

Recent videos verified by ABC News which are circulating online show Ukrainian armored vehicles operating beyond three formidable layers of Russian defenses, close to the settlement of Verbove.

Military analysts from the Institute for the Study of War assessed that Ukrainian forces had indeed “broken through Russian field fortifications.”

They cautioned, however, that it was “too soon to forecast if Ukraine will achieve an operational breakthrough” in that area of the front lines.

Despite the heavy human toll from each battle, and the fact that rain forecast for the coming weeks is likely to slow any progress down, soldiers of the 3rd Assault Brigade remained optimistic and highly motivated for a fight which one commander predicted could last “one to two years.”

Torri said she felt angry and sad when people criticized the slow pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

“We are fighting the biggest evil in the world right now,” she said. “And if we lose, the rest of the world will lose, because Russia will not stop.”

Asked if he felt frustrated by the fact that Ukraine did not get more help to combat Russia’s dominance in the air, Commander Rolo said Ukraine was fighting for western civilization and democracy and against “Russia’s dictator-led fascism.”

“If the western world is not willing to defend its values, this disappoints me,” he added.

 

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(NEW YORK) — Russian forces are allegedly committing continuous war crimes in Ukraine, including rape and “widespread and systematic” torture, the latest Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine found.

The Russians are allegedly torturing people accused of being Ukrainian army informants in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and in one case, the torture was so extreme that it caused a victim’s death, the commission said in its latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday.

One torture survivor said, “Every time I answered that I didn’t know or didn’t remember something, they gave me electric shocks,” according to the commission.

“Well into the second year of the armed conflict, people in Ukraine have been continuing to cope with the loss and injury of loved ones, large-scale destruction, suffering and trauma as well as economic hardship that have resulted from it,” Eric Mose, chair of the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, wrote in the report. “Thousands have been killed and injured, and millions remain internally displaced or out of the country.”

In the Kherson region, members of the Russian forces allegedly sexually assaulted women as their relatives were forced to listen from nearby rooms, the commission said. Sexual assault victims ranged in age from 19 to 83.

The commission also found evidence of “unlawful attacks with explosive weapons,” including attacks on residential buildings, shops, a restaurant and a medical facility.

Konstantin Yefremov, a senior Russian army lieutenant who fled Russia, told ABC News in February he witnessed his country’s troops torture prisoners in Ukraine, including beating and threats to rape.

Yefremov, 33, spent three months as an officer in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region and said he personally witnessed the torture of Ukrainian prisoners during interrogations, including the shooting of one POW in the arms and legs and threats of rape.

The commission stressed “the need for accountability” for Russia’s “scale and gravity of violations,” as well as “the need for the Ukrainian authorities to expeditiously and thoroughly investigate the few cases of violations by its own forces.”

ABC News’ Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.

 

 

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(LONDON) — Thousands of ethnic Armenian refugees have started fleeing from the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, amid growing fears of an exodus following Azerbaijan’s successful military offensive to retake control of the region last week.

Nearly 3,000 people have already crossed the border into Armenia as of Monday morning, according to an Armenian government statement quoted by the Russian state news agency TASS.

Reporters on the border reported dozens of civilian cars and other vehicles have been driving to the crossing.

Azerbaijan blockaded the region for nine months prior to its offensive and controls the only main route out. On Sunday it permitted the first civilians to leave, reportedly escorted by Russian peacekeepers.

Azerbaijan launched a lightening offensive last week that defeated the ethnic Armenia authorities in the enclave within two days of fighting, prompting them to lay down their arms and agree to disband their military forces. Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for most of the last 35 years since a war amid the break up of the Soviet Union.

Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians were also driven out of Karabakh by Armenian forces during the war in the 1990s when the Armenians were able to establish control.

Ethnic Armenians in the enclave have said they are unwilling to remain there under Azerbaijani rule, saying they fear persecution.

Western countries, including France, Germant and the United States, have expressed fears for the security of the Armenian population.

Armenian authorities said they are prepared for tens of thousands of families to flee.

Azerbaijani troops have been halted on the edge of the region’s capital since end of the offensive, which saw Azerbaijan already seize a number of villages.

Azerbaijan has said it wants to “reintegrate” the Armenian population but has not presented any plan for doing so or for safeguarding their rights. In areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it has previously retaken, Azerbaijan has encouraged Azerbaijanis to come resettle.

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(LONDON) — Canada’s House of Commons speaker apologized for praising a Ukrainian veteran who fought for a Nazi unit.

During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the Canadian parliament on Friday, speaker Anthony Rota called 98-year-old veteran Yaroslav Hunka a “hero.”

Hunka, who was in the crowd and received two standing ovations, served as a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS before retiring to Canada.

Jewish human rights groups raised concern, with The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center calling the praise shocking and outrageous, claiming that Hunka’s military unit was implicated in the mass murder of Jews and others.

“There should be no confusion that this unit was responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable,” a statement by FSWC reads.

On Sunday, the speaker issued an official apology.

“I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision,” Rota said. “I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world.”

He also took on full responsibility for admitting and praising the veteran in the Canadian Parliament, saying that no one among the Ukrainian delegation or the fellow parliamentarians knew about his plans or remarks beforehand.

The opposition however has called for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to apologize and investigate. Trudeau’s office said that Rota’s apology was “the right thing to do” and that he acted alone.

The 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, was a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command.

Although the unit has not been found guilty of any war crimes by a tribunal, its members are accused of killing Jewish civilians, BBC News reported.

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(CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico) — The U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Sunday that the agency’s top official has met with authorities in Mexico to work on ways to better secure their shared border.

Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller traveled to Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city on the Rio Grande, just south of El Paso, Texas, where he met with senior officials from the Mexican government and the railway industry on Friday.

During those discussions, Miller “urged coordination of efforts to diminish surging irregular migration, and continuation of lawful trade and travel while reiterating the need for coordinated engagement — to include mirrored patrols with local Mexican law enforcement agencies,” CBP said in a press release.

Miller also “noted his appreciation for the continuing attention to dangerous migrant travel aboard railcars” and “discussed the impact that increased resource needs being devoted to processing inadmissible noncitizens has on CBP’s enforcement mission and operations at the ports of entry,” according to the press release.

“We are continuing to work closely with our partners in Mexico to increase security and address irregular migration along our shared border,” Miller said in a statement Sunday. “The United States and Mexico remain committed to stemming the flow of irregular migration driven by unscrupulous smugglers, while maintaining access to lawful pathways.”

On Saturday, CBP announced the resumption of operations at the international railway crossing bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas.

The United States has been grappling with a surge of unauthorized crossings of migrants at its southwestern border after so-called Title 42 restrictions expired in May, when the federal government lifted the national public health emergency for COVID-19. The restrictions were a pandemic-related immigration policy that allowed the U.S. to swiftly turn back migrants at its border with Mexico for the last three years in the name of protecting public health.

Many of the migrants are fleeing poverty and hardship in their home countries in Central and South America, but some are coming from as far as Asia.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Matt Rivers, airing Monday on Good Morning America, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens said he believed the thousands of migrants who arrived in Eagle Pass, Texas, last week were by design. Organized crime draws the law enforcement focus there, he said, making it easier to smuggle people elsewhere.

“In terms of flow and the threats that we’re seeing with fentanyl and with the criminal organizations that are our adversary, it’s about as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” Owens told ABC News.

Owens wants more agents and resources in response to the surge, hoping something will change. He said his agency’s ability to respond to the current amount of migrants at the border “isn’t sustainable.”

“This is up and down the system,” he added. “Everybody is overwhelmed.”

ABC News’ Luke Barr and Matt Rivers contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Embassy of Cuba in Washington, D.C., was “the target of a terrorist attack,” when two Molotov cocktails were tossed at the building on Sunday night, according to Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.

Embassy staff “suffered no harm” and “details are being worked out,” Rodríguez Parrilla said on social media.

“Terrorist attack against the Cuban embassy in the United States. The Cuban Embassy staff have not been injured,” the embassy said in a statement.

The Molotov cocktails tossed on Sunday amounted to the second violent attack on the embassy since April 2020, when “an individual shot several rounds against the embassy using an assault rifle,” Rodríguez Parrilla said.

“The anti-Cuban groups resort to terrorism when feeling they enjoy impunity, something that Cuba has repeatedly warned the US authorities about,” he said.

The Embassy of Cuba reopened in 2015, when formal diplomatic relations between the two countries were normalized.

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(TEHRAN) — In a new interview, the wife of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi repeated claims by her country’s officials that the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last fall was the result of a preexisting illness — which Amini’s family vigorously disputes, believing instead that she was beaten in custody after being arrested by Iran’s notorious morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

Speaking with ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an interview that aired Sunday, Jamileh Alamolhoda defended Iran’s approach to requiring headscarves for women in public while seeking to minimize the crackdown on protests sparked by Amini’s death.

“She was loved by all of us. I’m a mother myself, and I do understand that — the value of girls and women as a whole,” Alamolhoda said.

She also claimed that she was in “constant contact” with “all of the medical personnel” involved in Amini’s case.

Since last year, massive protests of thousands have roiled Iran in what some international observers believe mark the biggest threat to the government’s authority since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Those demonstrations have also been met with a sharp response.

According to the U.N., some 500 people, including 71 children, have been killed by Iranian security forces and police. But Alamolhoda disputed those figures, telling Raddatz the protests were “a big lie” while blaming the uprising on the U.S.

“I do think things can happen of that nature in any country, naturally,” she said. “However, in our country, they are turned into political projects and those are fundamentally because of the intentions of foreign governments whom are keen to see other events occur in Iran.”

“So no one was killed?” Raddatz pressed. “No one was executed because of those protests? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Many were killed, but in defending the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Alamolhoda said.

Alamolhoda is the most public-facing wife of an Iranian president since the revolution five decades ago that brought about Iran’s modern government. She comes from an ultra-conservative family, has two daughters with her husband and holds a PhD.

Raddatz pressed Alamolhoda on her opinion of a law passed last week by Iran’s parliament that imposes harsher punishments on women who violate the country’s hijab laws. Under the new legislation, violators face up to 10 years in prison.

Alamolhoda did not directly answer the question initially, only comparing the law to “dress codes everywhere.”

“You have dress codes everywhere, even here in university environments, in schools and everywhere else,” Alamolhoda said. “And I need to tell you that hijab was a tradition, was a religiously mandated tradition, accepted widely. And now for years it has been turned into a law. And breaking of the law, trampling upon any laws, just like in any country, comes with its own set of punishments.”

Raddatz followed up.

“There are women who believe it is repressive. While they respect those who choose to wear the hijab, they don’t want to be forced to wear the hijab. What do you think the punishment should be?” she asked.

“I do not specialize in law,” the president’s wife responded. “So I cannot … answer you on a professional level. But punishments are equally dispensed to any breaking of the law throughout many countries.”

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(LONDON) — African rhino populations are increasing despite poaching and habitat loss, new figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) show.

The new figures, released Thursday, highlight that protection and biological management initiatives across the continent have resulted in black rhino populations rising by 4.2% to a population of 6,487, and white rhino populations rising by 5.6% to a population of 16,803.

It is the first time since 2012 that there has been an increase in the white rhino population, the species classified as ‘near threatened’ on the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species.

“With this good news, we can take a sigh of relief for the first time in a decade,” said Dr. Michael Knight, chair of the IUCN’s Rhino Specialist Group (AfRSG). “However, it is imperative to further consolidate and build upon this positive development and not drop our guard.”

According to the World Wildlife Fund, there were 500,000 rhinos in Africa and Asia at the start of the 20th century. By the end of 2022, the African rhino population stood at just 23,290 according to latest figures by the IUCN.

However, thanks to “intense” and heightened protection and management efforts over the years, rhino populations on the continent are beginning to rebound.

“The rebounding rhino populations aren’t just a win for rhinos, but for the many wildlife species that share their ecosystems and the people who steward these lands,” Nina Fascione, Executive Director at the International Rhino Foundation, told ABC News.

“The growing rhino populations are a testament to the effectiveness of collaborative conservation efforts throughout Africa and the resilience of these species.”

Poaching, however, remains the biggest threat to all rhino species, as highlighted in the 2023 State of the Rhino report; poachers changing their tactics, focusing attention from the largest rhino population to more susceptible ones.

South Africa — home to the continent’s largest rhino population — has suffered “devastating poaching losses” as poachers target its reserves.

“Large, protected areas like Kruger National Park in South Africa have also greatly increased security measures to reduce the number of poaching incursions on their land,” says the International Rhino Foundation. “Poachers have reacted by targeting other, smaller areas, like province-run Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve, which has borne the brunt of South Africa’s rhino poaching deaths in the past year.”

Namibia — home to the world’s largest black rhino population — saw a devastating 93% increase in rhino poaching from 2021 to 2022.

In January, the U.S. treasury secretary announced the launch of a joint U.S.-South Africa anti-poaching taskforce to combat poaching, and increase sharing of financial intelligence units to support law enforcement agencies and disrupt illicit trade.

“We must follow the money in the same way we do with other serious crimes,” Yellen announced whilst touring South Africa’s Dinokeng Game Reserve.

Climate change also poses a growing risk to Africa’s rhino population as it’s devastating impacts on human communities has a ripple effect on wildlife and increases the risk of human-wildlife conflict.

“Competition over water resources may also cause increasing strife and disruption between communities and between humans and wildlife, bringing people in ever closer contact with rhinos,” says the IRF. “Poverty resulting from loss of crops and livestock may lead to increased poaching as a way to earn income.”

In early September, conservation group African Parks Foundation announced they are set to release 2,000 rhinos into the wild following the purchase of one of the world’s largest private captive rhino farms, Platinum Rhino.

It is set to be Africa’s largest rewilding programs of any species, set to take place over the next 10 years.

Only two surviving members of the critically endangered northern white rhino subspecies remain in the world — Najin and Fatu — both living under 24-hour protection in Kenya’s Ol-Pejeta Conservancy.

“Continuing a positive population trend for both black and white rhinos will require enormous efforts by governments, land managers, community members and others to ensure conservation actions surpass poaching,” says Fascione. “Rhinos have been around for millions of years — we cannot let them go extinct on our watch.”

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