The black rhinoceros, which has four subspecies, is doing relatively well, though widespread poaching for the animals' horns, which are used in Asian traditional medicine, continues to flourish, he said.Ĭonservationists are now focusing their efforts on ensuring the safety of these animals and reducing the demand for rhino horn in Asian countries such as Vietnam. The story of the northern white rhinoceros is 'a fantastic lesson on what not to do, and how we need to avoid getting to this point with the other rhinos,' Lewis noted. 'It's not just another charismatic animal-it's also a species that has a very clear ecological role, and we need to be very worried that we have lost that,' Pimm said. Rhinoceroses are key to keeping grasslands healthy, as they eat-and keep in check-particular species of savanna plants.

'It also means we're losing this distinctive, important animal within the savanna ecosystem,' he said. (See a map of the international illegal trade in rhinos.) 'It's a measure of the fact that rhinos are being massively poached and in trouble wherever they are.'įrom African lions to elephants, many of the continent's megafauna species are plummeting in number due to poaching and other human causes. That 'we've lost is a statement of just how bad off large animals are across Africa,' said Pimm, who is also a contributor to National Geographic's News Watch blog. Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, now considers the animal basically extinct. With just one breeding male left, the outlook for the subspecies is grim. (Related: ' Why African Rhinos Are Facing a Crisis.') The northern white rhinoceros is a 'victim of evolution,' Lewis added-it was a remnant population cut off from the southern white rhinoceros by the Great Rift Valley and the dense forests of Central Africa.Īlready isolated and occurring in low numbers, the northern subspecies got caught up in political turmoil in Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda, and its numbers quickly dwindled because of poaching and habitat loss.

'It's a shame the subspecies got to that point-that's the worst-case scenario in trying to bring back a subspecies,' said Matthew Lewis, senior program officer for African species conservation at WWF. The southern white rhino, a related subspecies, is considered near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.īorn at the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, Suni had been an emblem of hope: He was one of four of the world's eight remaining northern rhinos sent to the Kenyan conservancy in 2009 as part of a last-ditch effort to save the critically endangered subspecies. The death of the rare creature, which had not fathered any offspring, leaves only six northern white rhinos left on Earth, including just one male of that subspecies. (See ' 1,000+ Rhinos Poached in 2013: Highest in Modern History.') An autopsy is under way, but officials are certain poachers did not kill Suni, as the animal was monitored around the clock. White rhinos are thought to be able to live up to 40 or 50 years. The 34-year-old animal was found dead October 17 in his enclosure in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy, possibly from natural causes, the reserve said in a statement. The northern white rhinoceros is one step closer to extinction with the death of Suni, one of only two breeding males left of his kind.

Northern white rhinoceros extinct