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Nov. 1st, 2010 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaLast night on BBC2 I saw a orphaned baby rhino being bottle-fed and it was the most adorable thing ever. ♥
It was in the one-off Last Chance to See, a special programme dedicated to the critically endangered northern white rhino, which was declared extinct in the wild about a year and a half ago. There are exactly eight northern white rhino left in the whole world, and the programme last night documented the return of four of those eight animals to Africa from a zoo in the Czech Republic. Three of the four had been born in captivity, the fourth had been taken from the wild as a youngster, 35 years ago, but rhinos don't breed well in captivity, they need more space. The hope is that in the safety of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya these four rhinos will start to breed and thus begin the painstaking process of bringing their species back from the brink.
I actually had tears in my eyes watching those four rhinos taking their first steps onto African soil. This is it for the northern white rhino, the last possible hope of preventing total extinction, their last chance to survive. It is a humbling thought.
It was in the one-off Last Chance to See, a special programme dedicated to the critically endangered northern white rhino, which was declared extinct in the wild about a year and a half ago. There are exactly eight northern white rhino left in the whole world, and the programme last night documented the return of four of those eight animals to Africa from a zoo in the Czech Republic. Three of the four had been born in captivity, the fourth had been taken from the wild as a youngster, 35 years ago, but rhinos don't breed well in captivity, they need more space. The hope is that in the safety of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya these four rhinos will start to breed and thus begin the painstaking process of bringing their species back from the brink.
I actually had tears in my eyes watching those four rhinos taking their first steps onto African soil. This is it for the northern white rhino, the last possible hope of preventing total extinction, their last chance to survive. It is a humbling thought.
