THIS IS WHAT EXTINCTION LOOKS LIKE
An emotional CHRISTOPHER STEVENS on the sad life and death of world’s last male northern white rhino
‘The Last. Nevermore’
THE world’s most eligible bachelor is dead.
Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, was a celebrity in the animal world who enjoyed a pampered retirement, cared for around the clock by a team of keepers and under armed guard to protect him from poachers.
he was, after all, the final hope of an entire species whose numbers were destroyed by illegal hunters seeking a lucrative trade in rhino horn.
Now that hope is gone. The 45year-old rhino, kept since 2009 at the Ol Pejeta conservation project in Laikipia National Park in Kenya, was put down on Monday.
Sudan had been ailing for years: his legs were almost too weak to support his vast bulk. he spent his last days lying on grass while his keeper massaged his hide with wet clay to prevent it drying out and to keep the insects away, and worked oil into his hooves to stop them from cracking.
his sad, captive life started in Southern Sudan in 1973. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, northern whites were numerous in Central Africa.
At just a few months’ old, Sudan was snared by Richard Chipperfield and Ann Olivecrona who worked for the Chipperfield family – circus moguls and then the world’s biggest supplier of wild animals to zoos and safari parks. Surviving film footage shows spotters in aeroplanes directing the ‘net team’ which chased baby rhinos on the ground by Jeep.
Mr Chipperfield later said he remembered the day Sudan was caught. he said: ‘I don’t think I ever thought I was doing wrong. You have to remember, in those days there was so much wildlife around.’
Young Sudan was sold to a zoo behind what was then the Iron Curtain, run by eccentric Czechoslovakian TV presenter Josef Vagner, who had the backing of the Communist government for his efforts to bring exotic animals to eastern europe.
Vagner struck shady deals with African warlords, running Soviet arms to Uganda and other countries in exchange for wildlife export permits.
Sudan was mated with Nasima and their first calf, a male called Nabire, was born in 1983 but died at Dvur Kralove three years ago. The second, a female called Najin, is now 40.
Sudan and the babies pulled in the crowds but the breeding experiment went sour. Sudan became aggressive towards females. When he gored one of them, his keeper, Mirek, rushed into the enclosure and was killed as the female picked him up with her horn and dashed him against a wall.
Today we know that northern white rhinos cannot thrive in zoos and need space if they are to breed happily. But that knowledge came too late.
Vagner died in 2000, but his dwindling band of rhinos lingered on in the zoo until 2009, when Sudan, Najin and his granddaughter Fatu (father unknown), were shipped to Africa.
The hope was that in a more natural habitat, the old male might feel like mating. Sudan was fertile but no longer had the strength to perform.
Then the only other male northern white, Angalifu, died at San Diego Zoo in California in 2014.
An American wildlife activist named Daniel Schneider tweeted a picture of Sudan looking forlorn in his pen at Laikipia.
‘Want to know what extinction looks like?’ read the caption. ‘This is the last male northern white rhino. The Last. Nevermore.’
The tweet went viral. Sensing an opportunity, fundraisers at Ol Pejeta signed Sudan up to dating app Tinder, declaring him ‘the most eligible bachelor in the world’.
Tinder users could swipe across his picture to donate money.
Smitten devotees – including actress Liz hurley – made a pilgrimage to the park to see him.
Ultimately, the only hope for Sudan and his species lay with IVF treatment. In 2016, a team at the Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin implanted eggs harvested from Najin and Fatu and fertilised with Sudan’s sperm – inbreeding is not an issue for species in crisis – in a southern white female acting as a surrogate.
The bid failed but it is still possible that a northern white will one day be born via IVF or by cloning – Sudan’s genetic material has been collected with that in mind.
But clinging to such slight hope is to ignore his legacy. What happened to his species can happen to any.