Bold Effort To Save Rhino Completes Critical Step

Be inspired by this in-depth story from National Geographic of committed people working to save the white rhinos and make your Monday in #backyardbend a good one.

By Haley Cohen Gilliland

On a frigid day in December 2009, four northern white rhinos were picked up from the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic and transported to the airport in Prague, where they were loaded onto a Martinair 747 cargo jet as snow swirled outside. Accompanied by a veterinarian and packed in special wooden crates built to support their heft—they typically weigh between 3,750 pounds and 5,290 pounds—the rhinos flew to Kenya. There, they were scooped up in DHL trucks and driven to Ol Pejeta, a wildlife conservancy nearly three times the size of San Francisco in the country’s center.

The four individuals—two males named Suni and Sudan, and two females named Najin and Fatu—represented half of the surviving northern white rhino population, a subspecies of white rhino distinguished from southern white rhinos by their furry ears and shorter front horns. According to Save the Rhino, an advocacy group, as late as 1960, about 2,360 northern white rhinos roamed Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda. But by 1984, rampant poaching and civil violence had slashed their population to about 15. (Read more about the deadly rhino horn trade.)

Twenty five years later, in 2009, just eight northern white rhinos remained. Read the Full Story HERE.

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