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Reuters

A rare northern white rhino has died in Kenya, leaving just six of the animals alive and bringing the famed African species one step closer to extinction.
While there are thousands of southern white rhinos roaming the plains of sub-Saharan Africa, decades of rampant poaching have slashed northern white rhino numbers.
Suni, 34, who was the first northern white rhino to be born in captivity, was found dead on Friday by rangers at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, about 250km north of Nairobi.
The conservancy said Suni was not poached, but the cause of his death was unclear. It added that he was one of the last two breeding males in the world as no northern white rhinos were believed to have survived in the wild.
"Consequently the species now stands at the brink of complete extinction, a sorry testament to the greed of the human race," the conservancy said.
The Kenya Wildlife Service veterinarians would conduct a post mortem in the coming days, the conservancy added.
Suni's father, Suit, died in 2006 of natural causes, also aged 34.
Born in the Dvur Kralove Zoo in Czech Republic, Suni was in 2009 one of the four northern white rhinos brought from that zoo to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy to take part in a breeding programme to try to prevent the extinction of the species.
Wildlife experts had hoped the 36,000 hectare private wildlife conservancy, located on the equator and nestled between the snow-capped Mount Kenya and the Aberdare mountain range, would offer a more favourable climate for breeding.
"We will continue to do what we can to work with the remaining three animals on Ol Pejeta in the hope that our efforts will one day result in the successful birth of a northern white rhino calf," the conservancy said.
Another pair of the rhinos, too old to reproduce, live at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego in the United States, with another aged female remaining at Dvur Kralove, close to the border with Poland.
The Czech zoo is the only one in the world to have succeeded in breeding the sub-species in captivity.
Wildlife conservationists have struggled to reverse a decline in numbers of several African species, undermined by ferocious poaching by gangs which mostly ship rhino horns to Asia.
Last year, 59 rhinos were poached in Kenya, a country famous for its sprawling Maasai Mara game park and abundant wildlife.
Rhino horn sold on the streets of major Asian cities was last year more valuable than gold or platinum, with traders asking for about US$65,000 a kilogram of rhino horn.
 

Half a tonne of ivory bound for east Asia seized at Riyadh airport
Authorities in Saudi Arabia have seized half a tonne of ivory being smuggled from Africa to east Asia.
Customs agents at King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh intercepted the shipment, which was in transit. They found 588 pieces weighing about 490kg on a flight from an African country to east Asia, the official SPA news agency said without elaborating.
A 1989 ban on the trade has not stopped gangs exploiting a continued demand for tusks in Asia.
Agence France-Presse


Death of northern white rhino Suni raises extinction fears

Kruger National Park staff work to relocate a rhino to protect it from poachers. The less-endangered southern white rhino is still at risk from professional gangs. Photo: AFP

News

World

Death in Kenya of one of only two breeding males in the world has sub-species on the brink


A rare northern white rhino has died in Kenya, leaving just six of the animals alive and bringing the famed African species one step closer to extinction.
