#northern white rhino
Sudan is THE LAST male northern white rhino on our planet. One of his caregivers at Ol Pejeta Conservancy has some wise words from the majestic, soon to be extinct rhino in his care:
Sudan you are ok and healthy,though you spend many days alone,I wish you can tell the story more than i do; tell them how life was in southern Sudan, before that finger pulled the trigger and saw your brothers,…
Nola was born in the southern savanna woodlands of Sudan. In the mid-1970s she was captured to protect her from poachers, and in 1989 she moved to the San Diego Zoo. She shared her enclosure with buffalo, giraffes and gazelles, and enjoyed daily belly scratches.
In 1990, a male rhinoceros named Angalifu joined Nola in San Diego, but she wasn’t interested in him. After hormone treatments, she mated with another male named Saut, but never became pregnant.
Saut died in 2004. Angalifu died last year. Nola was getting older, and suffering from a bacterial infection. Yesterday the zoo announced:
In the last 24 hours, Nola’s condition worsened and we made the difficult decision to euthanize her. We’re absolutely devastated by this loss, but resolved to fight even harder to #EndExtinction.
With the death of Nola this weekend, the northern white rhinoceros inches closer to true extinction. But it became extinct in the wild 2008, and the remaining rhinos have all been to old to breed for several of years. Still, there are plans to resurrect the subspecies using a preserved egg and sperm. The San Diego Zoo’s Institute has pledged $2 million to this difficult project.
And there is reason to be hopeful. A cousin subspecies, the southern white rhino, has seen its population blossom from 20 to 20,000 in the last century thanks to the intervention of humans.
Want to learn more? Check out this article by my friend (and housemate) Sarah Kaplan.
Image credits: Jeff Keaton,Make it Kenya,Ernst Schäfer,Colin P. Groves et al, TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images
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Only Three Northern White Rhinos left
The northern white rhinoceros is one of the two sub-species of the white rhinoceros. They are extinct in the wild, but live in zoos.
Nola, a 41 year-old rhino who lived in the San Diego zoo, had to be euthanized yesterday, because of a severe bacterial infection. The other three rhinos live in a zoo in Kenya where they are constantly watched due to poaching concerns. The other three are two males and one female who are too old to reproduce naturally, however, sex-cells have been harvested in attempt to save the sub-species.
The northern white rhino population used to thrive, however, due to habitat loss and poaching, this is the tragic end result. Rhinos are poached for their horns that are used in “traditional Asian medicines” that have been proven not to work. Within years, this will be the result of many species on our earth. It is truly heart breaking.
Too see what you can do to save the rhinos visit: hereandhere
Photo by: Heather Paul via Flickr
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