Whilst the other subspecies of white rhino – the southern white rhino – is now considered a conservation success, the northern subspecies’ story is very different. The conservation history of the northern white rhinoceros (NWR) has been a difficult one, characterised by persistent threats and missed opportunities. However, we now have one last chance to secure the remaining few breeding individuals. This will mean saving not only these indivual animals but also the valuable genetic heritage they carry, enabling the northern white rhino to be conserved in the natural habitats in which they evolved.
The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Dvur Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, the non-profit organisation Back to Africa, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya and Fauna & Flora International have joined forces in a last attempt to save the northern white rhino.
The northern white rhino used to range over parts of north-western Uganda, southern Chad, southern Sudan, eastern Central African Republic and north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. There is fossil evidence that their range once extended as far as the Rift Valley in Kenya 3,000 years ago. As recently as 1960, significant numbers of northern white rhinos still remained in the wild, but the situation has deteriorated rapidly since then, and they are now the most critically endangered rhino subspecies and the most threatened mammal in the world.
Poaching for horn, hide and meat has progressively driven the northern white rhino to the brink of extinction. Until recently, the only known wild population remaining was in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unfortunately, this area continues to be ravaged by civil war and armed conflict, with devastating consequences for the wildlife and the people working to protect it.
Despite the unrest, in the 1980s and 1990s, and thanks to sterling conservation efforts by several organisations such as Frankfurt Zoological Society, WWF, International Rhino Foundation, African Parks Network and ICCN (DRC’s conservation agency), the Garamba National Park northern white rhino population managed to recover to around 30 animals.
Regrettably, during a lengthy period of insecurity it then crashed to just a handful of animals which persisted until 2007. There was a brief opportunity to translocate four of these animals to a secure conservation area in Kenya in 2004, but the initiative was compromised by local politics, and this opportunity was lost. There has been no sign of the last four rhinos at Garamba since then and intensive surveys in June 2008 again failed to locate them, leading scientists to believe that the northern white rhino subspecies is now effectively extinct in the wild.
