Africa
Baobab
Rhinos in Africa
Starting the year with a bang
Jan 26th 2011, 18:34 by J.L. | LONGONOT
BAOBAB wrote a piece on conservation last year which began with the strange journey of four northern white rhinos from a zoo in the Czech Republic to a conservancy close to the icy peak of Mount Kenya in central Kenya. The beasts constituted half of the northern white rhinos left alive on the planet. The move home to Africa was a last-ditch attempt to save them from extinction. The hope was that back in the wild (or almost the wild, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy being surrounded by electric fences), the male rhinos would find their vigour and the females their lustre.
And so they have. Baobab can report that the northern whites have started the year with a bang. The first mating was between the oldest northern white, Sudan, and a southern white rhino named Aramiet. That will not save the northern white, which has probably been distinct from the southern whites for one million years. But a second mating, between Fatu and Suni, northern white on northern white, just might. To Baobab, the vitality of the rhinos is a challenge to the claims of rich-world zoos that they are the ark of salvation: Africa is destroying its nature, unthinkingly, but under certain circumstances it can be the sanctuary of endangered species.
About Baobab
On this blog our correspondents delve into the politics, economics and culture of the continent of Africa, from Cairo to the Cape. The blog takes its name from the baobab, a massive tree that grows throughout much of Africa. It stores water, provides food and is often called the tree of life.
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This is an excellent article that tells us more about the exciting Czech 'back to Africa' campaign than did the BBC's documentary last autumn, one hour of waffle dominated by the ubiquitous but in this field unqualified Stephen Fry, who had almost no useful input. I hope Baobab will continue to monitor this project and hopefully be able to report more 'bangs for their bucks' achieved by those responsible. Incidentally, the four other living Northern Whites are all incapable of reproducing, so all the eggs are, as it were, in the basket of these Bohemian emigrants.
Welcome to Kenya Folks!
I had the pleasure of visiting Ol Pejeta last December and got a full explanation of the rhino match making going on. I am happy to hear Cupid's arrows have struck!
How did the Czech Republic end up with half of the northern white rhino population of the world?
Wait, commenting here might cause increase breeding activity for the rhinos. Since what I do for a living is manipulate sex organs, for financial gains. Except lets consider that the rhinos are my version of products worth currency, I'm actually manipulating sex organs to improve the environment.
Trying to talk rhinos into having sex is quite the relife from trying to talk humans out of it. Though I actually like to think about fish quantities and forest levels.
Couldn't care less. This is rich white people's wheezes and their fads for big animals or furry ones.
The Rhino and the elephants should and almost certainly will die out because they failed to make themselves useful to the evolutionary top dog on their patch: Man. By contrast camels and cows are going nowhere.
@ Andrew
Good question, Andrew. I believe they were bought from other zoos some years ago with this conservation project in mind. Czech zoos have a wonderful record of conservation of rare animals. Apart from this plan to save the northern white rhino from extinction, Czech zoologists have done much to save the following endangered species from extinction: Prezewalski's horse, maned wolves. certain sloths and crocodiles, cheetahs, a rare Asian ass, and even the European bison, which was once common in Bohemia in the Middle Ages. It is now only to be found in Poland, although a one was recently spotted in the mountains of north CZ, presumably having migrated from Poland. CZ has sent some back to Poland to improve the native stock, decimated for food during and after WWII.
I shall treat Reigal's comment with the scorn it deserves.
And why not? This is the cradle of humanity, and it seems many other species. The good Kenyan weather must be doing its magic.
scorn away but it does not make what I said wholly untrue. Local Africans see elephants, hippos and rhinos as big scary beasts or worse, as outright pests. Perhaps if Africans tamed them like the asians did and used them as beasts of burden the elephanst would've stood a chance of survival. But if I were an African elephant maybe I would rather go out free and noble and get myself a place in history than live shackled, humiliated and enslaved like the ignobled Asian elephant.
Anyway as I said this protection mania is a Western European fad. 60 years ago it was hunting they were interested in. That passed. This will pass too. Maybe 50 years from now we will see the very thought of spending tens of thousands of dollars transporting a hippo or whatever it is across continents as obscene.
The process of extinction of species is a natural process and therefore unstopabble. Some species will die out and others will take their place.