Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A critically endangered northern white rhinoceros, the last surviving male member of his species, has been placed under 24-hour production by armed guards at the Ol Pejeta game conservancy in Kenya, various media outlets reported earlier this week.
The rhino, a 42-year-old that is one of the last five remaining northern white rhinos on Earth, has around-the-clock protection from rangers using high-tech equipment such as night vision goggles and GPS tracking units in order to protect him from poachers, the New York Daily News said.
Protecting the last male of a dying species
The male rhino, who lives at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy with two of the four surviving females (the other two live in San Diego and the Czech Republic), has already had his horn removed to make him a less attractive target for poachers, according to The Dodo. Attempts to have the male breed with his female neighbors have been unsuccessful, the website added.
Named Sudan, the rhino arrived at the conservancy from a zoo in the Czech Republic in 2009 with three other rhinos. The hope was that it would be willing and able to breed in surroundings that were more natural to them, but as of five years later, no baby northern whites had been born and the other male, a 34-year-old named Suni, died last October.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help people support the rangers’ cause.
Northern white rhinos faring worse than their southern cousins
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the northern white rhino is one of two subspecies of the white rhinoceros. The other, the southern white rhino, had been considered extinct during the 19th century before a small herd was found in South Africa in 1895. They were able to bring back the species, and there are currently 20,000 southern white rhinos alive today.
White rhinos primarily inhabit grassy savanna and woodlands interspersed with grassy clearings, the WWF added, and are believed to have the most complex social structure of all rhino species. The creatures can live up to 40 years and can reach 150-185 cm in height. Females weigh 1,400-1,700 kg, while males weigh 2,000-3,600 kg, the conservation group added.
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