On Nov. 22 zookeepers euthanized a 41-year-old rhinoceros that was suffering from a painful bacterial infection at the San Diego zoo safari park. Zoo animals perish all the time — and this one died largely of old age — so why is this worthy of international news? Because the rhinoceros, a female named Nola, represented 25 percent of her subspecies’ international population.
The northern white rhinoceros once roamed a large chunk of central Africa, but centuries of poaching have left the subspecies on life support. With Nola’s death, only three aging individuals survive, all under constant armed guard at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya — and all unlikely to reproduce.
This dismal story of the northern white rhinoceros is both similar and very different from its closest cousin. In the late 19th century, the southern white rhinoceros was believed to be extinct. Then a tiny population was found. From this last, lucky group, conservationists built a population 20,000-strong, making it the most secure of the world’s rhinos. The northern rhino has had several close calls as well, but now it seems its number is up.
Illustration: Yusha
Still, scientists debate what exactly we are losing. Taxonomists have long considered the northern and southern white as subspecies, but a 2010 paper argued that northern white rhinos are actually a distinct species based both on their genetics and morphology (physical attributes); other rhino experts contested the paper, preferring the traditional classification.
While that debate goes on, it is important to remember that the distinction is somewhat artificial (one might even argue arbitrary), as it represents our very human desire to classify things into hierarchies. What is decidedly true is that we are on the verge of losing another genetically, physically and behaviorally distinct rhino due to the lie that their horns cure hangovers.
In 2009, I was fortunate enough to meet Tam, a male Bornean rhinoceros in a sanctuary in Malaysia. He made whistling sounds and rubbed his massive body up against the fence as he enjoyed his breakfast. He was gentle as a 700kg lamb, but, like Nola, Tam is now one of the last of his kind. There might be only three Bornean rhinos — a subspecies of Sumatran rhinos — left on Earth.
Less than 100 individuals of both the Sumatran and Javan rhinoceros survive in the wild. The last Vietnamese rhino — a subspecies of the Javan — was killed by poachers in 2010. And in South Africa, poachers are killing more than one thousand white rhinos a year.
Today, saving the northern white rhino means turning increasingly toward science fiction. Using frozen genetic material, San Diego Zoo plans to create a southern and northern rhinoceros hybrid. Down the road, it is possible that scientists could create a full northern white rhino embryo and use a southern white rhino to carry it.
However, what is really notable about the northern white rhino’s current plight is not its steady march toward extinction, but rather the fact that we get to count down the remaining individuals one by one like some abacus-wielding Grim Reaper.
There are currently thousands — maybe millions — of species on the same track toward annihilation today, but the vast majority go unaided, unprotected and unnoticed. Many of them have not even been given names, as their forest homes are falling or their ocean corners are acidifying. The northern white rhino is just one of these endangered earthlings.
It does not have to be this way. In an age of mass extinction — with unknown impacts on human society — wildlife conservation remains massively underfunded and unsupported.
In the US, funding for the environment and animals, which includes animal rights groups, represented just 3 percent of charitable giving last year. The UK public sector spent less than £60 million (US$89 million) on international biodiversity in 2013.
Yet, aggressive actions to save our planet’s wild diversity would also mitigate climate change, clean up our oceans and safeguard our food and water supplies, in addition to giving our children a world nearly as wild and diverse as the one we inherited.
After all, what makes the Earth unique in our solar system — and maybe the whole universe — is not just the northern white rhinos (or the Homo sapiens), but our whole wild panoply of life.
Nola’s death should not just make us concerned for rhinos, but for every species great and small, famous and inconspicuous.
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