There are now just five northern white rhinos left in the world

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Via The Verge: ‘Male northern white rhino dies of old age in San Diego, pushing the animal one step closer to extinction.’

I posted awhile back about the fact that there were only six of these magnificent beasts left. But why did the world wait to that point to sound the alarm?

1 thought on “There are now just five northern white rhinos left in the world”

  1. well, part of it might be that they were only viewed as a separate species from Southern White Rhinos starting around 2010!
    http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/4185/0

    other problem is that their home range appears to be full of human civil wars — e.g., Congo and Sudan.
    http://fightforrhinos.com/2014/10/28/what-happened-to-the-northern-white-rhinos/

    apparently there were only a couple thousand by 1960! so I guess that the third answer is they got rare before the environmental/conservation movement really developed teeth.

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