Hopes for saving the species die with northern white rhino

Another of the nearly extinct northern white rhino has died in Kenya, leaving just six of these animals in the entire world.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Rangers found the rhino, named Suni, on October 17 in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, located 150 miles north of Nairobi. Suni was 34-years-old when he died, and is thought to have died of natural causes.

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Suni's father, Sunit, also died at the age of 34, back in 2006.

Suni was one of the last two breeding males left in the world, and the conservancy says that the species will likely go extinct.

"Consequently the species now stands at the brink of complete extinction, a sorry testament to the greed of the human race," a park spokesman said.

"We will continue to do what we can to work with the remaining three animals on Ol Pejeta in the hope that our efforts will one day result in the successful birth of a northern white rhino calf."

Suni was brought to the park in 2009 from the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, the only known place where northern white rhinos have bred in captivity. There he was with three other white rhinos-two females and one male-as part of a breeding program to attempt to stop the extinction of the species.

In 1960 there were more than 2,000 northern white rhinos left alive, but widespread poaching left only 15 alive in the wild by 1984-all of which were located in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Wildlife Fund said that there are only four northern white rhinos now alive in the wild, though there are unconfirmed reports of survivors in the southern Sudan.

Of the five subspecies of rhino, only the southern white rhino is not endangered, and has a population estimated at 20,000 in the African nations of Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa.

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