I’ve seen a lot of endangered animals in my life, including cheetahs, Sumatran tigers, vaquitas, California Condor, pandas, amur leopard, etc. Many of these species are dangerously low in terms of population, especially the vaquitas and Sumatran tigers. Much of our planet’s biodiversity is endangered. But I found a sub-species whose number is so low, it made me want to throw up. So, I’m going to first reveal the species and how many of them are still alive. And the animal is…, the Northern White Rhino, and the number I’m going to say is real, it’s verified. The number of Northern White Rhinos is… 2. Yes, I know you were probably expecting to hear something like 100 or 200, 50, or 60. It sounds impossible but it’s true. First, when I learned that this sub-species is endangered, I was expecting it to be something like 200, or 400, or something like that.
And this was all done by poaching and illegal wildlife trade, I didn’t even know if the poaching industry could make an animal’s population 100! Then I saw the vaquita, and I thought the poaching industry was one the most powerful industries in the world, but 2!? There are only 2 Northern White Rhinos now, let that sink in for a second. And yes, there were 3. Sudan was one of the male white rhinos, he, unfortunately, had to be euthanized away due to age-related issues. There are now only 2 females left, named Najin and Fatu, they have to live in captivity for their survival so they live in OL Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.
Now we only have one solution left to save the species, it is Vitro fertilization (Artificial Breeding). Now artificial breeding is going to take a lot of money and since the rhinos live in Africa, I’m terrified that the governments will not be willing to pay money or give the resources needed to make artificial breeding possible. That’s the worst-case scenario but I’m very anxious about the fate of this subspecies, the fate of the Northern White Rhino is still very much uncertain. We need to do this artificial breeding fast because rhinos don’t live forever. We need to be able to breed them quickly and efficiently. If we took their protection as a top priority then maybe it wouldn’t have gotten to this situation, and a lot of money would have been saved.
Now, governments around the world will have to fund artificial breeding and they’ll have to put in a lot of money so that we can do it the quickest and most efficient way. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you trying to bring back the Northern White Rhino to normal populations but I believe if governments keep funding and giving a ton of support to this attempt to give the Northern White Rhino a second chance, to correct our mistakes then one day we will have a world where the Northern White Rhino has a normal population and thriving.
