“Early this morning, the team made the hard decision to euthanize her”, zoo officials said in a statement on Sunday. The 41-year-old rhino had recovered from a surgery where veterinarians removed an abscess on her hip in January.
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The operation took place on November 13, but following a dramatic deterioration in her health recently, she was put down on Sunday. The world’s only surviving male northern white rhino is getting on in age and does not have the necessary energy to mount one of the two females he lives with. Nola, who has resided at the Safari Park since 1989, had been under veterinary care for a bacterial infection, as well as age-related health issues.
Furthermore, rhinos are hunted for their horn, with some cultures believing they have medicinal properties, and others seeing them as a status symbol.
The San Diego conservancy estimated that three of the animals were killed each day.
The other three northern white rhinos – Najin, Fatu and Sudan, all from Dvur Kralove Zoo as well – are under managed care at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, Simmons said. Unfortunately one of the females and the male are also of advance age, about the same age as Nola was, and so they have the same kinds of conditions that you see in geriatric animals, they are no longer reproductive.
The northern white rhino has been pushed to extinction as a result of extensive habitat loss and poaching over the past two decades.
The three remaining northern white rhinos are well guarded in Kenya. She was relocated to the park in San Diego to mate.
The strategy to save the northern white rhino is now reliant on the work of geneticists.
The northern white rhino “disappeared right in front of our eyes”, Kathleen Garrigan, a spokesperson for the African Wildlife Foundation, told National Geographic after Nabire’s death, “and we didn’t realize it until it was too late”.
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The news of Nola’s death came months after Angalifu, a 44-year-old northern white rhino, yielded to cancer at the same park.
