The only male Great White Rhino left on earth passed away last Monday in Kenya. The Rhino, named Sudan, was 45 years old.
There are only two females left in the world, and with no ways to reproduce, the species will likely be extinct in the next few decades.
According to National Geographic, Sudan was suffering from a leg infection that was worsened by the rhino’s age.
Sudan came from a zoo in the Czech Republic in 2009, and was a part of a conservation effort to create an offspring in order to help save the species. Sudan was past the Rhino’s natural breeding age, so this plan ultimately failed.
According to National Geographic, scientists were trying to breed a new rhino in a lab by harvesting their sex cells and using a complicated process called IFV. This process is very expensive, costing well over nine million dollars, and isn’t even guaranteed to work, according to Philip Muruthi, vice president of species protection at the African Wildlife Foundation, according to the National Geographic.
The Western Black Rhino was declared extinct back in 2011, and several subspecies of rhino are at high risk of going extinct in this century.
National Geographic Photographer Ami Vitale posted a despondent and chilling statement on Instagram saying, “Today, we are witnessing the extinction of a species that had survived for millions of years but could not survive mankind,”
Several conservation efforts are still in place to save existing subspecies of Rhino’s, including the Javan Rhinoceros, which only have about 60 remaining in Indonesia.
