The four northern whites were carefully introduced to several southern whites as well as black rhinos. The next step was to create a more natural social environment. "Within six months of their being here their skin had improved, their toenails had improved, the whole condition of the animal had completely changed," Vigne reports. Their horns were gray and their toenails-an indication of a rhino's health-were in "a pretty poor state." Things turned around pretty quickly once they reached Ol Pejeta and had 285 hectares on which to roam (plus round-the-clock armed guards to keep them safe from poachers). Despite the high quality of care they received at Dvůr Králové, "it was obvious to us that they'd been living in unnatural conditions," Vigne says. The first step was to get the rhinos healthy. simum) and possibly getting hybrid calves-not an ideal development, obviously, but enough to preserve some of the northern white's genetics into another generation. The other possible scenario involved introducing the northern whites to the closely related southern white rhino subspecies ( C. (One of the two rhinos that remained at Dvůr Králové died of old age in 2011.)įrom the beginning there were two anticipated outcomes: The best would involve the four northern white rhinos-two males and two females-breeding with one another and producing progeny. All of the rhinos were already getting old, and few had ever bred, but in 2009 the four youngest and healthiest animals were crated up and shipped to Kenya in the hope that living a more natural life would encourage the females to start going through a menstrual cycle and perhaps give the subspecies one last chance at survival. At the time there were only eight of these rhinos left in the world: two at San Diego Wild Animal Park and six at Dvůr Králové. About three years earlier the last wild members of their subspecies had been killed by poachers. The four northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta came there a little over four years ago from Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic. But nevertheless we're going to do what we can." "The reality is that the chances of it working are pretty small, and have been since we started. "You have to be realistic," he says, referring to the conservancy's efforts to breed the last four northern white rhinos in Africa. Richard Vigne, CEO of Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, admits that there's not a huge amount of hope of saving the northern white rhino ( Ceratotherium simum cottoni) from extinction.
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