The Last Rhino 2018

     Sudan was the last male Northern White Rhino in the world.  He lived to be 43 years old and he was 2 years old when he was taken from his mother’s side in Central Africa.  He became a prized exhibit in a zoo in Poland along with five other rhinos poached for this zoo.  The Dvur Kralove Zoo is a 180-acre zoo and the second largest in the country.  Josef Vagner was the Zoo’s director and he took over in 1965.  It was decided that 4 out of 5 of the white rhinos would be returned to Sudan because they were not leading normal lives in captivity.  Their horns were growing into strange shapes and they were not able to breed after the last calf in 2000.

     There are two female rhinos left in Ol Pejeta since Sudan died.  Ol Pejeta ia a 90,000-acre not-for-profit wildlife conservancy in Central Kenya’s Laikipia County.  It is situated on the equator wet of Nanyukie between the foothills of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya.  During his final years all the rhinos were kept under 24 hour armed guard to deter poachers.  The rhino horn is highly prized in Asian medicine and it is ground into a fine powder or manufactured into tablets.  It is used for the treatment of a variety of illnesses.  Civil war in this area has caused poaching because it takes money to fight.  There have been attempts to artificially inseminate the younger female rhino but it’s a very complicated process and has not been successful so far.  This is a very sad story because it’s the fault of man that this animal may become fully extinct.  Formerly there were many rhinos in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara.  I thought this was a very interesting film with a lot of information that I didn’t previously know.  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

53 minutes, PBS documentary directed by Rowan Deacon.

Note:  Amazon 5* with 2 reviews, Ottawa Public Library 4* out of 5*.

Latest Information on the White Rhino:  There are only three northern white rhinos left in the world.  One of the surviving animals has an infection that could worsen and cause death for this animal.  The West African black rhino is the rarest of the black rhino subspecies.  It is now recognized by the ICUN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) as extinct.  This species was once widespread in central Africa but it was decimated by poaching.  The population of the southern white rhinos is far greater in the wild.