Best of 2012: 6) Safeguarding wildlife without borders

We're bringing in the new year with a look back at our milestones for 2012. Check back each day for featured events and activities from across the Northeast!

While the bird that sits on a rhino's back and cleans it of ticks and other insects is called the oxpecker, it's sometimes referred to as the “rhino’s guard.”

Black rhino male and calf in Mkhuze, South Africa.
The black rhino, as well as the Sumatran, Javan and Indian rhinos,
is protected as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and listed from critically
endangered to vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. The only other species of rhino surviving
in the wild, the (southern and northern) white rhino, is listed on the Red List,
but only the northern white rhino is protected under the ESA.
Credit: Karl Stromayer/USFWS.

With poaching on the rise, the rhino needs more than these birds to protect it. And in February 2012, a major national U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service undercover law enforcement effort answered the call.