10th endangered rhino dies in Kenya after botched transfer

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A tenth critically endangered black rhino has died in Kenya after being moved to a new wildlife park and the sole survivor has been attacked by lions, wildlife authorities said Thursday in what some conservationists have called a national disaster.

The Kenya Wildlife Service’s acting director has been fired and several other officials have been suspended after “clear negligence” was found in the rhinos’ transfer last month from the capital, Nairobi, to Tsavo East National Park Rhino Sanctuary, wildlife minister Najib Balala said.

Preliminary investigations show the rhinos died from stress intensified by salt poisoning as the animals struggled to adjust to saltier water in their new home, Balala said.

“The animals were dehydrated, restless” and drinking more of the water only worsened the problem, said Peter Gathumbi, professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Nairobi.

“Shame, shame, shame,” prominent Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu wrote in a Facebook post in which she regretted not questioning the rhinos’ transfer in the first place.

Transporting wildlife is a conservation strategy used to help build up animal populations, and Kenya’s wildlife ministry has called the rhinos’ deaths “unprecedented” in more than a decade of such transfers. It has said it transported 149 rhinos between 2005 and 2017, losing just eight of them during that time.

Conservationists in Africa have been working hard to protect the black rhino sub-species from poachers targeting them for their horns to supply an illegal Asian market.

According to WWF, black rhino populations declined dramatically in the 20th century, mostly at the hands of European hunters and settlers. Between 1960 and 1995 numbers dropped by 98 percent to fewer than 2,500.

Since then the sub-species has rebounded, although it remains extremely threatened. In addition to poaching the animals also face habitat loss.

African Parks, a Johannesburg-based conservation group, said earlier this year that there are fewer than 25,000 rhinos in the African wild, of which about 20 percent are black rhinos and the rest white rhinos.

In another major setback for conservation, the last remaining male northern white rhino on the planet died in March in Kenya, leaving conservationists struggling to save that sub-species using in vitro fertilization.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. military remains released by North Korea on Friday will be sent to a military lab in Hawaii, where they’ll enter a system that routinely identifies service members from decades-old conflicts.

Identifications depend on combining multiple lines of evidence, and they can take time: Even after decades, some cases remain unresolved.

Dog tags found with the remains can help, and even scraps of clothing can be traced to the material used in uniforms. Teeth can be matched with dental records. Bones can be used to estimate height. And the distinctive shape of a clavicle bone can be matched to records of Xrays taken decades ago to look for tuberculosis, said Charles Prichard, a spokesman for the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency.

If a DNA analysis is called for, samples are sent to a military DNA lab at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Tiny samples of bone or teeth, no bigger than the amount of bone in the last joint of the pinkie finger, are enough to yield usable DNA, said Timothy McMahon, who oversees the Dover lab as director of Defense Department DNA Operations.

Each sample is sanded to remove surface contamination, ground to the consistency of baby powder, and then treated with a substance that dissolves the bone and leaves the DNA for analysis. That DNA is then compared with genetic samples from living people who are related to the missing.

The military has been collecting DNA from such family members since 1992, and has reached the relatives of 92 percent of the 8,100 service members who were listed as missing at the end of the Korean War, McMahon said.

The goal is to find bits of DNA in common between the known relatives and the unidentified remains, suggesting both belong to a particular lineage.