Standing next to his charge, Mwenda was dwarfed by Sudan’s head alone, and within dangerously easy striking distance of his horn, a weapon capable of impaling a small car. “Approaching a rhino can make you freeze,” Mwenda said, as he put down a bale of hay and a pile of carrots. At first, it took him three weeks to get the courage to, as he put it, “lay hands on Sudan.” On this October morning, he spoke to Sudan in a soft voice - even a geriatric rhino can charge with lightning speed. Mwenda has worked as Sudan’s personal ranger - a job that’s part nurse, part caretaker, and part friend - for four years and knows how to deal with the majestic creature. On a recent chilly morning in October, a park ranger named James Mwenda stepped gently into the enclosure. The conservancy has turned to fellow singles for help, using a profile of Sudan on the dating app Tinder with information on how to donate toward the $9 million needed to research a possible solution - but time is running out to develop methods to ensure these giants remain on the face of the Earth. Their survival has rested on Sudan’s massive shoulders since October 2014, when the only other fertile male, a fellow captive named Suni, died.īy April this year, all attempts at getting Sudan to mate with one of the only two remaining females, also in Ol Pejeta, had failed. Of the northern white species, only three are known to be alive today. Then humans came along and, in a few centuries of hunting and habitat loss, whittled them down to just a few thousand individuals. Rhinos have been around for over 30 million years, outlasting multiple ice ages and ancient giant predators. At 44 years old, he has lived longer than most of his species. The private pen in Ol Pejeta Conservancy is a perk earned with age by the rhino, named Sudan. MOUNT KENYA, Kenya - The world’s last male northern white rhinoceros has wandered alone, for almost a decade, in his own enclosure in a game reserve sprawling 27 square miles along the northwestern foothills of Mount Kenya.
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