This rhino’s death should make us worry about all creatures – great and small | Jeremy Hance
by Jeremy Hance from Environment | The Guardian on (#VPZS)
There are only three northern white rhinos after Nola was put to sleep. But it's not just rhinos in peril - thousands of species face extinction. It doesn't have to be this way
On Sunday, zookeepers euthanised a 41-year-old rhino who was suffering from a painful bacterial infection at the San Diego zoo safari park. Zoo animals perish all the time - and this one died largely of old age - so why is this worthy of global news? Because the rhino, a female named Nola, represented 25% of her subspecies' global population.
The northern white rhino once roamed a large chunk of central Africa, but centuries of poaching have left the subspecies on life support. With Nola's death, only three aging individuals survive, all under constant armed guard at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya - and all unlikely to reproduce.
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