Tick tock, the rhino clock

I’m as guilty as anyone for occasionally turning my back on the natural world, averting my eyes from the issues of the day to spare myself the anger and despair they bring out in me.

One issue at a time, I tell myself, taking in the devastation of the natural world in calculated doses so I don’t become overwhelmed.

But some of these issues are larger than others and, to this day, I haven’t paid the worst of them proper attention.

Here is just such a whopper, one I’ve avoided for some time: the case of the northern white rhino.

The white rhino is the second largest land mammal on Earth and it comes in two distinct subspecies: the southern white rhino occupying a healthy stretch of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya, and the northern white rhino, occupying considerably less.

There was a time when this northerly subspecies was common across Uganda, Chad, Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the ivory trade shrank those borders considerably.

The tusks of these enormous herbivores were coveted as decorations and as additives in traditional medicine, so much so that by 1960 their global population was estimated at a mere 2,360 individuals.

Poaching continued to the point of rampancy until there were only 30 individuals left by April 2003, all contained in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

They represented the very last wild population of northern white rhinos, the subspecies’ last genuine hope for recovery.

By 2006, only four of them remained and as best we can tell, they were all killed shortly thereafter.

The story of the northern white rhino might have ended there were it not for the few survivors living in captivity, the prized possessions of a handful of zoos.

Four of them were taken from the Czech Republic’s Dvur Kralove Zoo and released into a private Kenyan conservancy called Ol Pejeta, in hopes the fresh air would encourage them to breed, but no such luck.

Over the last few years, the number of captive northern white rhinos has fallen close to zero, marked by the death of Nola, age 41, at the San Diego Zoo.

Of the four at Ol Pejeta, one died of natural causes in October 2014; his name was Suni and he was 34.

Today, there are three northern white rhinos left on our planet, all at Ol Pejeta, surrounded constantly by armed guards lest they be poached into oblivion. The only male among them, named Sudan, is a senior at age 42 and has too low a sperm count for the species to survive. Najin, his 26-year-old daughter, has leg injuries which make sex and pregnancy impossible.

His granddaughter, Fatu, age 15, has a uterine disorder rendering her infertile.

The species, it would seem, is beyond help.

Running parallel to this failure of conservation is the story of the southern white rhino, beginning in very much the same way.

By 1900, long before the northern white rhino was brought to its knees, this southerly relative was pushed to the brink of extinction. That year, there was a single population left with 20 to 50 individuals in KwaZulu-Natal, a province of South Africa, but instead of declining further they were rescued, given every opportunity to recovery and shielded from the ravages of the ivory trade.

Today, there are more than 20,000 of them.

I mention this to demonstrate the power of political will, public participation and conservation efforts properly funded.

As I said, I’ve been avoiding the narrative of the northern white rhino for a while now, gleaning only the most recent developments from passing headlines.

It’s a countdown to tragedy and I’ve waited with anxiety for the next few ticks. But the longer it takes us to face these challenges, the more indomitable they become.

Had we rescued the northern white rhino as promptly and thoroughly as its southerly counterpart, this subspecies might not be endangered at all.

Thankfully, there are other species, near and far, we might still have time to save.