World’s last male northern white rhino dies in Kenya

World’s last male northern white rhino dies in Kenya

Context

Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, has died in Kenya at the age of 45, after becoming a symbol of efforts to save his sub-species from extinction, a fate that only science can now prevent

Backdrop

When Sudan was born in 1973 in the wild in Shambe, South Sudan, there were about 700 of his kind left in existence

• At his death, there are only two females remaining alive and the hope that in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques will advance enough to preserve the sub-species

Poaching crisis wiped out White Rhinos

Demand for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine and dagger handles in Yemen fuelled a poaching crisis in the 1970s and 1980s that largely wiped out the northern white rhino population in Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad

• A final remaining wild population of about 20-30 rhinos in the Democratic Republic of Congo died out during the fighting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2008 the northern white rhino was considered extinct in the wild
• In the 1970s, Sudan was shipped to the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic.
• He did manage to sire two females while at the Czech zoo. His daughter Najin, 28, and her daughter Fatu, 17, are the two females left alive at Ol Pejeta Conservancy