The last male Northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) in the world is serious ill, and could die very soon, leaving no males of this subspecies alive

The subspecies of White rhinoceros called Northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is potentially one of the subspecies with the least members alive. Right now they are counting only two females and one male in the entire world!

A Northern White rhinoceros. This guy was called Angalifu and used to live in San Diego Wild Animal Park. Unfortunately he died a few years ago. Image is Public Domain.

Due to their low numbers, the subspecies is already considered Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN Red List because the three living individuals are not really living in the wild anymore. Once it was known that this subspecies would face a huge threat of extinction in 1973, conservationists tried to take action. Sadly this did not work out too well, but luckily Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic had some in captivity. They were the main attraction there, but in order to try to save the species, they relocated them to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, a type of managed park where tourism helps pay for the care of the species that are kept there.

During their stay at the zoo and in Ol Pejeta Conservancy the entire subspecies in the wild has gone extinct, and all we are left with are the two females and the one male in the park. Conservationists have obviously tried their very best to get the rhinos to breed, but it just didn’t happen, which is why we are left with so few.

In Ol Pejeta, the rhinos are having around-the-clock armed guards to watch over them, so poaching is unlikely to happen. The three animals do officially belong to Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, but it seems likely that they will stay in Ol Pejeta for the rest of their lives.

The rhinos in the zoo back when they still lived there. Image by Wikimedia Commons users Mistvan, posted with the GNU Free Documentation License.

The last male could soon die, leaving it to be an all-female species

The male rhino had a terrible infection in his leg back in 2017, caused by his rather old age of being 45 years old. At first the vets believed that they were able to treat this infection, but a recently released statement tells us that things are more grim than anticipated. It turns out that the rhino has another infection in his leg at a different location, which has gone untreated for a long time, despite the fact that he has been to regular check-ups in the last years.

The infection is now being treated, but it is taking very long for it to grow, so his caretakers are now increasingly worrying about his mortality. They are afraid that he could soon die, and when this happens, there will officially be none male Northern white rhinoceros left in the world!

One of the Northern white rhinoceroses in Ol Pejeta. Image by Michael Dalton-Smith, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

What will happen to the species if he dies?

The big questions everyone’s asking is what will happen when he dies. Is the subspecies officially declared to go extinct, or do we wait to the two females to die first? Obviously the two females will not be able to give birth to any new members of the species, so the are at least ecologically extinct at this point.

Luckily, conservationists have a back-up plan for this situation, which could potentially save the subspecies from extinction. During the last years they have collected both sperm and eggs from the three living members, which means that they could attempt In vitro fertilization (IFV) while the females are still alive, or potentially do this is a host species after these two are dead. The Southern white rhinos are not that unlike the northern subspecies, so they have candidates that could potentially provide a womb for the offspring.

Artificially impregnation of females using this method is a common procedure for humans, but it has never been attempted in a rhino or a closely related species at any point. So while it should theoretically be possible, it might not work due to unknown reasons.

The Northern white rhinos used to be pretty common

A hundred years ago, there were between 2,000 and 3,000 wild Northern white rhinos left in the wild, and they could be found in Uganda, South Sudan, in parts of the Central African Republic, and in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but their numbers steadily declined in the 20th century due to poaching. In the 1970s and 80s, poachers effectively reduced their wild population size to only 15 living individuals! At this point the conservation efforts increased dramatically, and the wild population increased to over 30 individuals at one point. Everything was looking great until 2003, when poaching intensified, and the entire population were decimated in a short amount of time.

There were still a few individuals left in zoos, but these also kept dying, mostly due to the fact that they were mostly old individuals that had been living in zoos for a long time. The decline kept on going, and now we are left with only three rhinos, and perhaps even one fewer in a little while.

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