What were you doing in 1973? I’m not sure what month exactly, but generally? I went off to university. In Liverpool, to study Biochemistry. That year, Watergate was big in the USA, but in the UK it was the year of the three-day week, of power cuts and the miners’ strike. It was the year of Mick McGahey, Edward Heath and Slade. The UK joined what was then called the European Economic Community. And, in Sudan, a white rhinoceros was born, to be known as (unsurprisingly) Sudan. He died this week.
He had an uneventful life; forty-five years of it, roughly equivalent to ninety or more of our years. A good innings, I suppose. He managed to live, unfettered, for a couple of years, before along came another species, man, and captured him, in 1975. Off he went to the Czech Republic until 2009. Then he was relocated almost back home, to Kenya. He hadn’t really had much of a time in the Czech Republic, as the weather wasn’t conducive to breeding. I guess it wasn’t warm enough. He only managed to produce three offspring.
In the meanwhile, his subspecies, the northern white rhinoceros, was being systematically wiped out by hunters and poachers. The problem is that some people believe that rhinoceros horn is, when ground up, an aphrodisiac. This is patently absurd, as it is simply keratin, the same substance that nails and hair is made from. It seems that Vietnam accepts a lot of the poached rhinoceros horn, for traditional medicine. I don’t quite see why fingernail clippings cannot be used, as it is the same chemical, but perhaps I’m missing some unknown factor?
In any event, when Sudan returned to Kenya, there weren’t a lot of his kind around, and by the time 2014 came, he was pretty much it. He was known as ‘the last man standing’, as his son, Suni, had died. Aside from frozen sperm, and a couple of females who are Sudan’s offspring, there is no hope for the subspecies. When I say there is no hope, I mean it. He was, for the last four years, the only male of his kind in the world. Just think about that for a minute. The only one.
We’ve done this. Not you, of course. Not me, either. But man, the species, has. How supremely arrogant! How marvellously ignorant! We have managed to get rid of another type of living thing. We rid the world of the West African Black Rhinoceros just a few years ago, too, in 2011. The list goes on: the dodo, the wonderfully named quagga, the Tasmanian Tiger, Pyrenean Ibex, Passenger Pigeon, not to mention the plant species. Of course, living things do become extinct, naturally. But, my word, aren’t we doing just a great job in helping the process along? Our lifestyles, our desires, our selfishness, has brought us to this. Sudan is just a symbol, bless him.
How have we managed, in such a short time span, to do it? I despair. I’m raising a glass to Sudan tonight. ‘The last man standing’.