A rhino’s ovaries lie two meters within its body, so collecting eggs requires shoulder-length gloves and a lot of dexterity. That work is now underway-but it’s tricky. The only way to preserve some northern white-rhino genes is to artificially interbreed them with southern whites. Even when there were still four living individuals, conservationists argued that the survivors were so inbred and genetically narrow that they couldn’t give rise to their own viable population. Classifying something as its own species can influence how you might go about protecting or breeding an animal, but the northern white rhino is already too far gone. In many ways, this is an academic debate with little real-world import. In the case of the northern and southern white rhinos, the conservation community still largely counts them as subspecies. There are dozens of ways of doing so, and working out whether two groups are subspecies or species can be like working out whether a mound of sand qualifies as a pile or a heap. In 2010, three researchers argued that the northern and southern white rhinos are physically and genetically distinct enough to justify classifying them as two distinct species. This, combined with the ongoing threat of poachers, threatens to reverse the successes of the last century. An increasing number of landowners are “seeking to get rid of their rhino,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Most of the southern whites live on private lands in South Africa, but as their numbers have grown, their value has fallen. Still, that incredible comeback is precarious. Now, there are more than 20,000 of them in the wild-more than any other rhino subspecies. And the other subspecies-the southern white-is something of a success story.Īt the end of the 19th century, it was down to just a few dozen southern white rhinos, clinging to existence in a single South African reserve. The northern white is one of two subspecies that are separated by around a million years of evolution. It’s important to note that the white rhino is not extinct. Even when rhinos mated, none of the females achieved a confirmed pregnancy. In 2009, he and three others-Najin, Fatu, and an unrelated male, Suni-were moved to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy to take part in a last-ditch breeding program. In 1975, he was captured by animal trappers at the age of 2, and moved to Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic. Sudan escaped the fate of his wild peers. In 2008, the creature was believed to be extinct in the wild. By the early 1990s, there were just a few dozen left. But in the following decades, pseudoscientific beliefs about the medical properties of rhino horn created a lethal demand that poachers rushed to fill. In the 1960s, an estimated 2,300 northern white rhinos still lived in the wild.
The only way to save the northern white is to now artificially inseminate their eggs with stored sperm from Sudan and other males, and implant the resulting eggs into females of the closely related southern white rhino.
After all, both Najin and Fatu are highly inbred, and neither of them are capable of reproducing naturally. But it doesn’t really change the fate of the northern white rhino, which was already functionally extinct long before Sudan died. Sudan’s death is certainly a tragedy-the heartbreaking end of a momentous individual life, and a moment of symbolic import for the world. His death means that the total northern white rhino population on Earth stands at just two: Sudan’s daughter, Najin, and his granddaughter, Fatu. After his health took a dramatic downturn, a team of vets made the decision to euthanize him. At the age of 45, Sudan was an elderly rhino who suffered from various age-related problems and infections. On Monday, Sudan died at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy. The Rich Men Who Drink Rhino Horns Sandy Ong