by Scott Leslie
The Dutch first named the animal the “widje” rhinoceros, not for its colour but for its wide, square snout that is adapted for grazing. Misinterpreted, the English “white” has stuck. Surpassed in size only by the elephant and the hippopotamus, the white rhinoceros can weigh over 2,000 kilograms, reach almost two metres tall at the shoulder, and measure four metres in length. Northern white rhinos can live up to 40 years in the wild; in a healthy, secure habitat, they can enjoy a natural population growth of 7 to 9 percent per annum. The “Last Chance for Survival” project involves Fauna and Flora International, the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, Back to Africa, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and the Kenya Wildlife Service.
The entire global population of northern white rhinos is fewer than 10 captive animals, 4 living in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, 1 remaining in the Dvur Kralove Zoo, and 2 at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park.
In December 2009, two male and two female northern white rhinos from Dvur Kralove Zoo were sent back home to Africa to try to save the subspecies. Travelling by air and road, on December 20 the travel-weary foursome arrived at their destination: Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, a wildlife conservation facility run by an organization that has already had success bringing back the endangered black rhinoceros.
Straddling the equator in the wild Aberdare Range of Kenya, Ol Pejeta is a healthy 360-square-kilometre patchwork of natural grassland, wooded plains, acacia scrub, and evergreen thicket. It is already home to elephants, giraffes, lions, black rhinos, and even some southern white rhinos—all well secured against poachers by guards and an electrified perimeter fence: heaven if ever there was one for the endangered northern white rhinoceros. Although technically they are still captive animals, it is hoped the natural surroundings in Africa will encourage more typical social and territorial behaviour (zoo animals rarely behave like those in the wild). The ultimate goal is to induce them to breed, something they’ve done little of in captivity: the last baby northern white rhino was born way back in 2000 at Dvur Kralove Zoo.
Though still early days, so far it appears the precious population of four northern white rhinos is doing quite well getting accustomed to a progressively more natural environment as the size of their enclosures are gradually increased. And there’s more good news: in early 2011, the youngest male and female of the four have been showing real amorous interest in one another and may be close to mating. When and if they do, and if they produce a baby rhino, it will be a small first step in reaching the goal of reintroducing northern white rhinos into the wilds of central Africa within 20 years.
Success in bringing rhinos back is not without precedent. Happily, the closest living relative of the northern white rhino, the southern white rhino, has enjoyed a renaissance; through aggressive conservation, its numbers now approach 20,000, up from a low of fewer than 30 animals at the end of the 19th century. And further encouragement can also be found in the success of other large mammal species. Not far away in northern Africa, there has been a slow but steady resurgence of the scimitar-horned oryx, another currently extinct-in-the-wild hoofed animal. Will the northern white rhino follow suit? Never say never.
SCIMITAR-HORNED ORYX
The scimitar-horned oryx, with its white, muscular, horse-like body and tail and metre-long pointed horns (which can look like a single horn when viewed in profile) prompted Aristotle and Pliny the Elder to wonder whether it was the prototype for the unicorn. Tragically, since becoming extinct in the wild at the end of the 20th century, the sight of this antelope running wild today would be as much a figment of the imagination as would be a glimpse of the mythical horned horse itself.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way. The scimitar-horned oryx is thought to have once been abundant across North Africa, with a million or more animals ranging from Tunisia south to Nigeria and from Mali east to Sudan. Living in semi-arid grasslands, acacia woodland, and rocky hillsides at the edge of the blistering hot Sahara desert, the oryx was superbly adapted to a bone-dry existence. To conserve water, this large 200-kilogram antelope raises its body temperature to nearly 47 degrees Celsius (that’s 10 degrees higher than ours) to reduce its loss to sweating. It can also go without drinking water for up to eight or nine months, getting whatever meagre moisture it needs from a diet of grasses, herbs, roots, and buds. Its nearly white body reflects the heat of the intense desert sun, and specialized kidneys greatly limit urine production, keeping water inside where it’s needed.
Each year, a wet season to the north beckoned and the oryx migrated, returning south again when it was over. Through most of the year they lived in herds of up to 40 animals, but during migration large congregations of 1,000 or more oryx were observed. This wouldn’t last. The Sahara became hotter and drier and began to spread, reducing the scimitar-horned oryx’s habitat and food supply and splitting the animals into smaller populations that moved into areas with enough forage.
Oryx in the northern part of their range were pretty much wiped out before the 20th century, owing mainly to overhunting. The southern population was able to hang on longer in sparsely populated parts of Chad and Niger, but even they were for the most part gone by the late 1980s—again victims of hunting. Just a handful survived out on the land. By 2000, the scimitar-horned oryx was listed extinct in the wild on the IUCN Red List. Although there have been occasional reports of the species in Chad and Niger since then, their presence has never been confirmed, despite intensive surveys.
It may be gone in the wild, but all is not lost for the scimitar-horned oryx. Today, there is a healthy population of over 1,500 captive animals in scientifically managed breeding programs around the world, largely the descendents of animals captured in earlier decades for zoos and private collections. They have become the gene bank from which a reintroduced wild population might one day emerge. Some of the biggest progress toward reintroducing the species into the wild has been made in Tunisia, close to where Pliny the Elder set up some of the first wildlife hunting reserves in the world about 2,000 years ago. It’s also one of the earliest locations where the oryx was wiped out, in 1910. Within an 8,000-hectare fenced area in Tunisia’s Dghoumes National Park, a small herd of scimitar-horned oryx, as well as endangered dorcas gazelles and Addax antelopes, are thriving in a semi-wild environment. In 2007, 17 of the oryx were released into this enormous compound. Eight were from another small Tunisian park. The other 9 were from US, French, and Irish captive herds specially chosen because of their distinct genetic lineage compared with the oryx already living in Tunisia. This step was taken to increase the overall genetic diversity of the Dghoumes animals, giving them a better chance at survival. The semi-wild reintroduction (they are still fenced-in) seems to be paying off. By early 2009, the original population of 17 had increased to 29 with the birth of a dozen baby oryx.
Once a viable, self-sustaining population is established, the goal is to someday remove the fences and let them range free and become migratory again. Similar programs for semi-wild, enclosed oryx populations are planned or are underway in Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, and Niger, all with an eye to the eventual release of the animals into the wild.
Perhaps one day the scimitar-horned oryx will once again range across North Africa, inspiring a whole new era of unicorn sightings.
MILU (PÈRE DAVID’S DEER)
If the oryx is a symbol of beauty and grace in the animal world (and how could a creature that inspired the unicorn be anything but?), the milu appears to be the archetype of improvisation. It has a long neck like a camel, cow-like hooves, the tufted tail of a donkey, and the antlers of a stag. This seemingly odd amalgam of four species was known to the Chinese as sze pu shiang, which means “none of the four.” The sze pu shiang, or milu, is indeed an unusual deer. Living in reedy, marshy areas, it loves to swim and frolic in the water, sometimes spending hours wading up to its shoulders. In summer its coat is a rich ochre-red, and males carry spectacular, large antlers. Like other members of the deer family, milu a
re social herding animals, making them a prime hunting target for Chinese people throughout the centuries. This, combined with the destruction of its coastal habitat, had the species sliding toward extinction by the 19th century.
While the wild population plummeted in the 1800s, a protected herd thrived in the Nanyuang Royal Hunting Garden in Beijing (at the time known as Peking). This enclosed 200-square-kilometre reserve of wetlands surrounding the Yongding River was sealed off from the outside world by a 70-kilometre-long wall. It had been heavily guarded since it was built during the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries. The public was never allowed access.
Enter Père Armand David, a French missionary and naturalist who would eventually discover the giant panda and some 60 other mammal species in China. Living in Beijing during Tongzhi’s reign as emperor in the mid-19th century, Père David likely passed the walls of the forbidden royal hunting reserve many times before his curiosity got the better of him. One day he finally persuaded the guards to let him take a quick look over the barricade. He didn’t know it at the time, but this would end up being “the peek that saved a species,” for at just that moment, a herd of odd-looking, unfamiliar deer walked by.
After much effort, Père David later got permission to take the skins of two already slain deer back to Paris with him, where they were subsequently described and named Elaphurus davidianus in his honour. Soon, the French government petitioned the Chinese emperor to allow some live deer to be taken back to Paris. Eventually, a few animals were sent to France, and later to England and Germany. The deer thrived in their new European environments and reproduced well. It’s a good thing, too: during heavy rains in 1895, the Yongding River, which flowed through the royal deer sanctuary, burst its banks and destroyed part of the wall, allowing all but 20 to 30 of the deer to escape. All the escapees were soon killed and eaten by hungry peasants. To make matters worse, just a few years later, foreign troops occupying the park during the Boxer Rebellion (when the Righteous Fists of Harmony nationalists fought to banish Western influence from a China ruled by the waning Qing Dynasty) killed and ate the remaining deer. That left just a few tiny wild herds near the Yellow Sea, in eastern China. By 1939, the last of these were shot, making the milu extinct in the wild.
However, because of Père David’s fortuitous peek over the wall and the subsequent European interest in the species, the story continued for what is now also known as Père David’s deer. The news of the Boxer Rebellion slaughter prompted European zoos to pool their breeding deer at the vast English estate of Woburn Abbey. Here, the last milu in the world, a total of 18 animals, of which only 11 were able to breed, were assembled in the hope of saving the species. By the end of World War II, there were about 300 deer. Since then, as its population continued to increase, milu have been distributed to zoos around the world. In 1956, several were sent home, in a sense, to the Beijing Zoo. A few decades later, in 1985 and 1987, a total of 38 milu were flown to the Chinese capital to live in a new 60-hectare reserve located in an area that was once part of the Nanyuang Royal Hunting Garden, bringing the species full circle. At about the same time, a herd of nearly 40 animals was sent from the United Kingdom to a marshy coastal area near the Yellow Sea called the Dafeng Milu National Natural Reserve.
Today, over 1,500 of the deer live in Dafeng, and more than 50 herds have been established elsewhere throughout China. Most of the herds are very small, with just a handful of animals, but the species continues to show its resilience and reproduces well. None is yet considered wild, since all remain under captive management. Despite a current population of over 2,000 animals, genetic diversity remains worryingly low, leaving the deer vulnerable to disease. A major conservation priority is to improve the gene flow among the disparate populations of the species to avoid a further loss of genetic diversity.
With over 1.3 billion people, good wildlife habitat is hard to come by in China, especially in the traditional range of the milu near the Yellow Sea, so the Dafeng Milu reserve is critical. There is a strong sense of hope for the long-term survival of the deer.
ALAGOAS CURASSOW
Before it was connected to North America by the Isthmus of Panama about three million years ago, South America was a giant island separated from the rest of the world’s land masses. Since breaking off the supercontinent Gondwana 130 million years earlier, its species were on their own to evolve in isolation. Combine this with its huge area (much of it equatorial) and its varied terrain and you have the richest variety of living things anywhere on the planet. For instance, nearly a third of the world’s 10,000 or so bird species live in South America. There is a price to be paid for such great biodiversity, however: many individual species have small populations or small geographical ranges. The Alagoas curassow has both.
One of the earliest South American species to be described by science, the Alagoas curassow was first noted by the German naturalist Georg Marggraf in 1648 in northeastern Brazil in what was then a Dutch colony. As one of the pioneers of South American natural history, Marggraf would eventually record hundreds of species new to science. As a testament to its rarity, the Alagoas curassow wasn’t seen again for over 300 years, until it was rediscovered in 1951. It then proceeded to disappear for another two decades, until the mid-1970s, when it resurfaced. In the late 1970s, several birds were taken from the wild to establish a captive breeding program as insurance against extinction. Only a few years later, there were an estimated 60 left in the wild.
A large, somewhat turkey-like ground-dwelling bird with a long tail, the Alagoas curassow grows nearly a metre long and lived in lowland Atlantic forest of Alagoas and Pernambuco States of Brazil. Its mostly black plumage with a purplish sheen is contrasted by its red legs, feet, and bill. The bird ate a diet of fruit and (judging from its habits in captivity) nested on the ground, where it likely laid two or three eggs. Owing to its rarity, little else is known about its ecology.
Two things caused the Alagoas curassow to disappear from the wild. By the late 1960s, rampant habitat destruction of its lowland forest and overhunting brought the species to its knees. Despite being well aware of the bird’s perilous predicament, in the 1970s the Brazilian government sanctioned the destruction of most of the large forest remnants left in Alagoas State. This was done as part of a program to plant sugar cane to be used in the production of ethanol (an early precedent of the dangerous push to biofuels promoted by many governments today). Most of its forest destroyed, the bird ended up living in tiny slivers of habitat that were easily accessed by poachers, who simply finished the job begun by the loggers. By the late 1980s, the Alagoas curassow was pretty much history. It appeared on the IUCN Red List as being extinct in the wild for the first time in 1994.
The last hope for the species is a small population of around 100 captive birds, divided between two facilities in Brazil. Only a few genetically pure Alagoas curassows are left, and they are kept separate from the remaining captive population, most of which are hybrids with more common razor-billed curassows. The goal is to try to increase the number of purebred birds through scientific breeding with an eye to reintroducing them in the wild someday, while keeping the hybrid birds as a backup in case something goes horribly wrong with the “true” Alagoas curassows. Although there is little in the way of suitable habitat left in the wild for the birds, conservationists have nevertheless found a few relatively large fragments that might be suitable for future reintroductions.
SPIX’S MACAW
In the neighbouring northern Brazilian state of Bahia, just across the border from the erstwhile home of the Alagoas curassow, the Spix’s macaw sits atop the list of the world’s most endangered parrots.
The 17 macaw species of South and Central America are the giants of the parrot family, the largest of which, the hyacinth macaw, reaches a metre in length. There were once five species spread across the Caribbean as well, but they’re extinct now. Among the most intelligent of all birds, macaws have a remarkable ability to mimic sounds and can manipulat
e fine objects with their dexterous feet. They form small social groups of 10 to 30 birds, which move noisily through their forested habitats searching for fruit. They are spectacularly beautiful birds with vividly coloured plumage, long tails, and big powerful beaks for breaking open seeds. Macaws are the iconic parrots and pay a dear price for it. In high demand by collectors, wild-caught specimens are a favoured commodity of the illegal worldwide bird trade, some species commanding prices in the tens of thousands of dollars on the black market. Unfortunately, conviction under laws such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species seems to be worth the risk to local criminals, who can make a year’s wages by capturing and selling a few rare macaws. This illegal activity has had a huge impact on the macaw population. Today, seven species, or 40 percent of the family, is endangered. At the top of the list is Spix’s macaw.
Spix’s macaw was first discovered in 1817 by German naturalist Johann von Spix in semi-arid forest known as caatinga woodland in Bahia. It wasn’t until 1854, however, that the bird was assigned its current scientific name, by none other than Napoleon’s nephew, naturalist Prince Bonaparte.
Growing up to 57 centimetres in length, this medium-sized macaw has a blue-grey body with bright blue wings and tail. Its blue-grey head sports a heavy black bill and a charcoal-grey skin patch around the eye. Probably always somewhat rare, Spix’s macaw was considered extinct by 1938. Decades later, in 1985, three of the birds were found by biologists in the same area where Johann von Spix discovered it over a century and a half earlier. In the blink of an eye, Spix’s macaw went from apparent extinction to critically endangered. Because very little had been learned about the species in the 168 years since it was first discovered, these birds were closely observed to ensure their survival and learn about their biology. There was a lot of catching up to do.