Death of Nola: Only Three Known Living Northern White Rhinoceroses

The San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research expects to implant northern white rhinoceros embryos from their Frozen Zoo in six southern white rhinoceros surrogate mothers within 10 to 15 years. The Institute finds support for the endeavor from the Center for Regenerative Medicine’s scientific expertise at Scripps Research Institute in nearby LaJolla and the Zoo’s financial commitment of $2,000,000. Six southern white rhinoceroses from South Africa get to call home 65 acres (26.30 hectares) of dry grasses and shallow ponds at the Zoo’s South Africa exhibit, Nola’s residence for 26 years, after her arrival in Escondido from the Czech Republic’s Dvůr Králové Zoo in Dvůr Králové nad Labem in 1986.

Scientists hope for successful in-vitro fertilization. 

The white rhinoceros genus is divided into two subspecies of respectively northerly and southerly African bio-geographies. Mammalogists judge assisted reproductive technologies of implants from eggs fertilized by preserved sperm more viable than mating between subspecies. They know of abnormalities when the mating is successful. The similar life cycles, natural histories, and physical appearances of the two subspecies lead mammalogists to hope for reconstituted populations in conservancies, parks, and reserves, if not in the northern white rhinoceros homelands of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Uganda, by the twenty-first century’s end.

Sudan, Najin, and Fatu make into a home under 24-hour armed guard a 70-acre (28.33-hectare) sanctuary at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. 

Nola needs to be remembered as:

• the orphan rescued at age two from poachers in Sudan and transported to the Czech Republic;
• the teenager befriending San Diego Zoo co-residents, the female Noti (died 2007) and the male Angalifu (died December 14, 2014 in Kenya at age 44 from cancer);
• the visitors’ favorite amiable 4,000-pound (1,800-kilogram) backscratch-lover with a horn curved in the “wrong” direction.

Nola’s last year on the Blue Marble offers a model of beauty, courage, and grace despite:

• battling bacterial, pelvic, and sinus infections;
• outliving all but three of her kind;
• suffering from abscesses on her right hip;
• surviving surgery on November 13, 2015, to drain recurring abscesses and remove 90 percent of the infection. 

My special thanks to:

• Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

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