Faults are in our nature
IN TV-viewing terms, nature, politics and history occupy very different turf. You never see a tiger on Question Time, for example. In the real world, as NATURAL WORLD: SUDAN: THE LAST OF THE RHINOS (BBC2) proved, the boundaries are more blurred.
As of now, there is only one northern white rhinoceros left. His name is Sudan, he is 42 and is cared for on a nature reserve in Kenya, where his keeper Zacharia Mutai describes him as “a great friend”.
Sudan is popular with many people and is perhaps the only member of the species to have a Twitter profile and a managed diary, restricting visitors in order to preserve his strength. Sudan’s end, of course, is still inevitable, and the future of his species in doubt. Scientists are currently trying out a complex IVF procedure, whereby northern white rhino embryos are incubated in the wombs of surrogate southern white rhinos.
It hasn’t worked so far nor have all other attempts to maintain a healthy breeding population. This isn’t about nature weeding out the unsuccessful offshoots, though, it’s about humans destroying the world when they try to change it. In the Seventies, when northern whites were more abundant, Sudan was taken to a zoo in the former Czechoslovakia, where visitors captive behind the Iron Curtain were thrilled by this glimpse of the world beyond. He was cared for by people diligent about animal welfare and he fathered two calves although in the meantime the zoo’s only breeding female rhino died.
It was becoming clear too that captivity did no favours to the creatures’ biology. Back in Africa, at the Garamba National Park, Dr Kes Hillman-Smith had used her insights into rhino behaviour to get the population up to a hopeful 31.
But at Dvur Králové zoo, with the communist economy going belly-up and access to Western expertise severely limited, they could only despair at Sudan’s failure to mate. The game reserve could have created a bright new future for the northern whites but political instability there led to an increase in armed, ruthless poachers. One by one, because of a deluded idea that rhino horn is an aphrodisiac, every northern white was butchered.
The newly-formed Czech Republic was happy to send Sudan and the other rhinos back to Africa and footage of the crates opening in 2009 suggested Sudan was happy to be home too. No more calves have been conceived though.
Captivity kept the rhinos out of the poachers’ clutches but probably ruined their chances of reproducing too. Ultimately, this was a story of human mistakes, some wellmeaning, some idiotic and all, so far, undoable.
In a well-intentioned variation on the house-swap, job-swap, wifeswap theme, THE WEEK THE LANDLORDS MOVED IN (BBC1) sends Britain’s burgeoning class of landlords off to live in properties they rent to the equally burgeoning class of hard-up tenants.
One of the landlords, buy-to-let mogul Peter used a lot of modern terms like “the learning” and “the takeaway” as he underwent his own experience in Milton Keynes. But to be fair, he also went into it with an open mind.
It was hard to believe anyone could have been quite so stunned to discover that houses were also people’s homes or that living in battery-like multi-lets was an alienating and depressing way to exist. Nevertheless, Peter seemed to discover this and did things to make it a bit better. Bravo.