April 18, 2015
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.
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