This is a time of mourning and serious contemplation regarding the conservation efforts we make to save such species. Even if you are a Northern white-supremacist rhino, you cannot wholly rejoice in the extinction of your enemy because you, and all of the other Northern white rhinos, are also teetering on the verge of extinction.
Or you may be like me, the typical armchair skeptic at his desk in his pajamas, robe, and slippers, sipping his tea, rubbing out scratches in the wood with walnuts, and shaking his head thinking, "Well, what could have reasonably been done? It must have just been their time."
Except that the Southern white rhino was culled down to a population of less than 100 at the end of the 19th century and now has an estimated population of 20,000. But the conservation measures taken to achieve this were not implemented in the Western black rhino's habitats.
I know that we live far away, and that we are extremely busy, I myself have dozens of square feet of desks that require constant finishing with walnut oil as I persist on scratching it as I set down my many remotes, devices, and tea cups on it.
There is also an excruciatingly limited portfolio of action we can take, living where we do. The biggest threat these animals faced were poachers, and as political instability increased in those areas, so did the poaching instances. I know we all love the idea of sitting atop a black rhino, our rifles trained on the jeep of approaching poachers, as we swayed from side to side as our terrible rhino mount glared at the poachers, shaking his head in disgust. But these regions have harsh political realities that makes this scenario unlikely.
In the case of the Northern white rhino, 5 of the surviving specimen are being moved from their home habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a preserve in Kenya, as the security of the Congo park can no longer adequately ensure their safety.
So, again, I come to. "What can we do?" and I've reached the end of this post, and I still don't have a satisfactory answer. Maybe donate some money to the http://www.olpejetaconservancy.org/ which is the park in Kenya where the white rhinos are being taken. But our finances are stretched, and there is a lot of human suffering that is also asking for monetary relief. On top of that, the IUCN reports that 25% of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction, so there is a lot going on outside of the world of rhinos.
In an interview a few days ago I heard a congresswoman from Florida say that what we need is for everyone to pick one issue and get really passionate and involved in it, she sees this as the way to get people back in government. And I mention it because I couldn't disagree with her more completely. We need to all strive for the Renaissance Ideal, we need to become people who can speak and debate intelligently across disciplines and issues. We need to move our debates away from derisive comments about one ideologies conclusions, and towards a debate and discovery about the assumptions that led to the conclusions, because that is where sharing and learning happens. An argument is only negative if you walk away from it without learning something.
If Oprah Winfrey wanted to save the Western black rhino, she probably could have done it, she probably had the money to buy them that time. But even if she gave every dollar she had, she could not have stemmed the root cause of their extinction. That is going to require an informed populace pushing political leaders to make intelligently aggressive decisions across the board.
Getting there is beyond the scope of any blog, but I think it has to start with making our communication more informed and informative. We must owe the rhinos as least that.
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