![]() They are old and getting older, and even if they could mate, veterinarians have determined that neither is capable of carrying a pregnancy to term. Suni died four years before Sudan.įour became three, then three became two, and now only Najin and Fatu remain. They were the eligible breeders, yet no calves were born. They included Sudan, his daughter, Najin, her daughter, Fatu, and another bull, Suni, who were all taken to Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy in 2009. By then, the only survivors were those that had been relocated to zoos in the 1970s. ![]() The last northern white was spotted in the wild in 2006. Nola arrived in San Diego in 1989 by the end of that decade, fewer than 40 northern whites remained in the northeast corner of what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Poaching and war rapidly thinned their numbers, from the thousands to the hundreds to the tens. Join PopMech Pro for unlimited access to more great stories like this! It remains a common ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, which prescribes powdered rhino horn mixed with boiling water as a cure for fever, gout, and rheumatism. In Europe circa 1900, rhino horn was fashioned into ornamental accoutrements, like walking sticks and pistol grips. Humans prized them for their horns, which can grow over four feet. Northern whites once roamed East and Central Africa, enjoying an herbivorous lifestyle with few natural predators. Of the world’s five rhino species, the northern white-one of two subspecies of white rhinos-drew the short straw. Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, in 2012 at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Among them are 12 cell lines taken from 12 different northern white rhinos, dating back to 1979. Inside the Wildlife Biodiversity Bank is the Frozen Zoo, a cryopreserve where 10,000 still-living skin cells from 1,100 different animal species are stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen at extremely low temperatures. Meanwhile, Durrant’s team in San Diego is undertaking an ambitious bioengineering challenge. His group is harvesting eggs from female rhinos in Kenya eventually the team hopes to create embryos using the frozen sperm of long-deceased northern white rhino males. Hildebrandt is the project head for BioRescue, an international consortium of scientists and conservationists. And while their scientific approaches may be slightly divergent, the scientists’ end goal is the same: to rescue the northern white rhino before the bell of extinction rings. In Europe, another group, under the direction of wildlife researcher Thomas Hildebrandt, is also working on the problem. Damon Casarezĭurrant is director of reproductive sciences at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and one of a handful of scientists around the world who are trying to save the northern white rhino. “It’s not only losing that animal that you know personally and you love it’s another step in losing the whole species.”īarbara Durrant photographed at the rhino habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s nikita kahn rhino rescue center in june 2021. “She was just the most amazing animal,” says Durrant, recalling Nola’s wide mouth, her skin the color of clay stone, and her distinctive horn, which curved toward the ground. Nola had also been euthanized, after age and infection caught up with her, in 2015. She lived at the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center, located at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, about 30 miles north of the city, and not far from where Durrant reports to work every day at the zoo’s Wildlife Biodiversity Bank. Nola was a northern white rhinoceros, one of only four that remained by the middle of the last decade, along with Sudan and his kin. Most people in San Diego knew Nola, though not the way Durrant did. She had never met Sudan, but she knew Nola. Half a world away, Barbara Durrant felt it. ![]() He lived out his final years under 24/7 armed protection at the conservancy, along with two of his female relatives. As the last male northern white in the world, he was both a global icon for conservation and a two-and-a-half-ton target-because the horn of even the most precious rhino is not safe from poachers. He was worn out and in pain.Īt age 45, Sudan was the final progenitor of the earth’s most endangered animal species: the northern white rhinoceros. The day before he was euthanized by veterinarians in March of 2018, Sudan collapsed in the dirt at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where he had lived since 2009. ![]()
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