This is Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhinoceros, being comforted by wildlife ranger Zachariah Mutai shortly before the rhino died on Monday, March 19, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Sudan was 45 and suffering from the normal ailments of an aged rhinoceros: degenerating muscles and bones, extensive skin wounds, infections. He is survived by only two other rhinos of his kind—his daughter, Najin, and granddaughter, Fatu. 

 

The northern white rhino is generally believed to be one of two subspecies of white rhinoceros, the other being the somewhat more numerous southern white rhino. The northern white’s end is wholly the result of human depredation: hunting in the colonial era, warfare, and poaching for its insanely valuable horn, which is sold in Southeast Asia as a cure for everything from cancer to hangovers. 

 

While some humans casually dispatch a species that has roamed the earth for 14 million years, many others have dedicated their lives to preserving it. Through their efforts, Sudan traveled the world in search of safety and a chance at reproduction. He was captured in 1975 and taken to the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, where he remained until 2009, when he was brought back to Kenya in hopes that the more familiar surroundings might lead him to breed. Sadly, those efforts failed. The only hope for the subspecies now depends on the (untested) in vitro fertilization of Najin and Fatu with sperm from deceased, unrelated white rhinos, coupled with an even more speculative attempt to create stem cells from cultures of white rhinos held by the San Diego Zoo, in order to create necessary genetic diversity.

 

Otherwise, the northern white rhino is extinct.