The Last Male White Northern Rhino Has Died

Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, sadly died on the 19th of March 2018, at the age of 45.He had been living at the Ol Pejeta nature reserve in Kenya.

^{Source: Ol Pejeta}

Elderly and severely ill since the last months of 2017, Sudan would not have lived more than three months longer.He was put to sleep by vets at the nature reserve to ease his suffering.His death marks the end to almost all hope of saving the northern white rhino subspecies from extinction.Jan Stejskal, who works for theDvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic where Sudan lived in the 1970s, told the AFP news agency:

His death is a cruel symbol of human disregard for nature and it saddened everyone who knew him.

^{Source: Ol Pejeta}

There now remain just two female rhinos, who also live at the Ol Pejeta nature reserve.Scientists are hoping to try and get them pregnant through IVF treatment, but the success rate of such treatments is low.Currently, the rhino population of the world is severely threatened, with all species of rhino in varying degrees of danger.Three among them - the black rhino, the Sumatran rhino and the Javan rhino - are critically endangered.

^{Source : Ol Pejeta}

Rhino populations have been decimated by poachers, who target rhinos for their horns, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

^{Via : BBC}