Last: The Story of a White Rhino

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Rhino caregiver James Mwenda spends his days taking care of the northern white rhinos along with 10 other dedicated rangers. Photograph: Gurcharan Roopra

The text is concise and powerful, using a few well-chosen words to tell a moving story. It is inspired by the true story of a Northern White Rhino called Sudan. You and your child could imagine you are a reporter and the girl in the story and have an imaginary interview about her interest in the rhino and returning him to the wild. Plot the rhino’s journey It also serves as a gentle criticism of the bureaucracy of modern conservation. With so many different non-governmental organizations at regional and international exerting different opinions on how to save wildlife, finding a common way forward that saves wildlife in an efficient and timely manner can be a struggle. Compounding the problem are local and national-level politics, corruption, and instability which make yielding results that much more challenging.Yet what of this animal? What happens to him subsequently? What are his hopes? What will he fulfil?

Unless science progresses further with stem cell research, this is the only hope we have," says Mutisya. Sudan (1973 – 19 March 2018) was a captive northern white rhinoceros ( Ceratotherium simum cottoni) that lived at the Safari Park Dvůr Králové in the Czech Republic from 1975 [3] to 2009 and the rest of his life at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia, Kenya. [4] At the time of his death, he was one of only three living northern white rhinoceroses in the world, and the last known male of his subspecies. Sudan was euthanised on 19 March 2018, after suffering from "age-related complications". [5] Capture in Africa [ edit ] Once in Italy, Fatu’s eggs were matured and combined with frozen sperm from Suni, a bull born in 1980. (Though he died of natural causes in 2014, Suni’s sperm was collected when he was still relatively young. His sperm is considered healthier than that collected from the aged Sudan.) After eight of Fatu’s eggs were fertilized, two were deemed viable, and were cryofrozen on Christmas Eve, bringing the total frozen embryo count to five. This story was inspired by the true story of Sudan, the last Northern White Rhino, who unfortunately died in 2018. Nichola Davies was inspired by the story of Sudan and the great efforts to help other animals that are endangered as well. In this story, we see the life of a male white rhino through his eyes--what he remembers about his home, others in his herd, his mother and her death, and the day he was brought in a “box” into captivity. We see that his world goes from fields of grass and flowers and inky skies filled with stars to a concrete enclosure with no smells or comfort at all. He looks around him and sees others who are also the last one of their kind--giraffe, monkey, bear, and bird. One day, he again awakens in a cage, but this time he is in a land that is familiar to him. He is home and he is free to roam in the fields and under stars as he did when he was younger.Sudan now lives in Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya with the world’s only two female Northern White Rhinos. He’s achieved celebrity status around the world with those who have taken up the cause of saving these magnificent creatures. In 1975 the group, including Sudan, was shipped to the Dvůr Králové Zoo for their northern white rhinoceros display. [8] The zoo was the only one in the world where northern white rhinos had successfully given birth, with the last calf being born in 2000. [9] Ceratotherium simum cottoni, or the Northern White Rhino, once roamed widely across the grasslands and savannas of Africa, but is now completely extinct in the wild due to extreme poaching.

Lazarová, Daniela (25 September 2014). "Dvůr Králové Zoo spearheading international efforts to save northern white rhino from extinction". Radio Prague. Archived from the original on 26 September 2014.Read a review: Last should be on the shelves in every school, library and home! – A Word about Books I would add a note for sensitive and/or young readers. When his mother dies, it only says she lies so still in the text, but the illustration shows a hunter with a gun next to a red-ended horn, implying he poached her for her horn. This is a Bambi-style sadness that may be troubling for sensitive readers, but it is true and a real problem.