Nola was born in the southern savanna woodlands of Sudan. In the mid-1970s she was captured to protect her from poachers, and in 1989 she moved to the San Diego Zoo. She shared her enclosure with buffalo, giraffes and gazelles, and enjoyed daily belly scratches.
In 1990, a male rhinoceros named Angalifu joined Nola in San Diego, but she wasn’t interested in him. After hormone treatments, she mated with another male named Saut, but never became pregnant.
Saut died in 2004. Angalifu died last year. Nola was getting older, and suffering from a bacterial infection. Yesterday the zoo announced:
In the last 24 hours, Nola’s condition worsened and we made the difficult decision to euthanize her. We’re absolutely devastated by this loss, but resolved to fight even harder to #EndExtinction.
With the death of Nola this weekend, the northern white rhinoceros inches closer to true extinction. But it became extinct in the wild 2008, and the remaining rhinos have all been to old to breed for several of years. Still, there are plans to resurrect the subspecies using a preserved egg and sperm. The San Diego Zoo’s Institute has pledged $2 million to this difficult project.
And there is reason to be hopeful. A cousin subspecies, the southern white rhino, has seen its population blossom from 20 to 20,000 in the last century thanks to the intervention of humans.
Want to learn more? Check out this article by my friend (and housemate) Sarah Kaplan.
Image credits: Jeff Keaton, Make it Kenya, Ernst Schäfer, Colin P. Groves et al, TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images
This is sad news in the animal world. -Emily
