Last of his kind
Battle to save species as only male northern white rhino fails to breed
SUDAN bears a terrible responsibility as the last male of his species, and the clock is ticking fast.
At 43, the northern white rhino’s back legs are struggling to support his threetonne frame and he is blind in one eye.
He is also too old to mate with the last two females of his kind, who also live at the Ol Pejeta conservation centre in Kenya – and are infertile anyway.
The threat of extinction has made Sudan a celebrity. Among the visitors who have posed with him in his highsecurity pen is actress Liz Hurley.
He even has his own Twitter handle and Tinder page. But none of this means anything as scientists race against time to perfect a pioneering form of IVF and avert the extinction of northern whites.
Sudan’s keeper Zacharia Mutai said: “I am getting very worried. Sudan is an old rhino, he could die tomorrow.”
Sudan is only alive today because he has spent most of his life in captivity. He was a baby when captured to order by a team from the Chipperfield safari park firm in Shambe game reserve, South Sudan, in 1975. Ann Olivecrona, who led the team, said: “It sounds crazy but in a way we were saving them from the threat of poaching.
“If we hadn’t caught Sudan he would have been dead a long time ago.”
The rhino was shipped to the Dvur Kralove zoo in the former Czechoslovakia, then part of the former Soviet Union. He and three other northern whites were looked after by Josef Vagner, Czechoslovakia’s answer to David Attenborough.
Sudan fathered three babies with a female named Nasima. But after she died, he refused to mate with the others.
Poaching, disease and pressure from human settlements decimated the northern white population in North East Africa.
In 2005, there was a plan to airlift the last five in the wild, in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo, to Ol Pejeta. But conservation centre boss Richard Vigne said: “Things became mired in politics and never went anywhere.” Within months, all five fell victim to civil war. Instead, Sudan and the remaining
If we hadn’t caught Sudan he’d have been dead a long time ago ANN OLIVECRONA ON THREAT OF POACHERS
females in Czechoslovakia were returned to Africa in 2009, to get them to breed.
But tests found the females’ ovaries had sealed up through lack of use.
Samples of Sudan’s sperm have been stored to fertilise eggs from the females for implantation in southern white rhino surrogates. However, experts have never used the methods on animals as large as rhinos and early efforts have failed.
As they cannot harvest and store the eggs, they must perfect the technique before the last females die.
Project leader Professor Thomas Hildebrandt said: “How do you save a species already declared extinct? That is why science has to come in. Humans did this by going for the horns and humans have a responsibility to correct it.”
Sudan: The Last of the Rhinos is on BBC2 tonight at 9pm.