Suni, one of the last seven remaining northern white rhinos, found dead

Date: 18.10.2014

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of one of our northern white rhinos, Suni. He was one of the four northern whites residing on the Ol Pejeta Conservancy - external link , Kenya. He was born 34 years ago at the Dvur Kralove Zoo as the first-ever northern white rhino to be born in captivity. Together with one other male and two females, he was translocated from our zoo to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in 2009.

Rangers found him on the morning of October 17th, 2014, dead in his boma. Suni was not a victim of poaching and the cause of his sudden death still has to be established. In 2006, his father Saút died in the Dvur Kralove Zoo by natural causes at the same age as Suni was now.

There are now only six northern white rhinos left in the world, all of them are in human care: three in Ol Pejeta, one female in the Dvur Kralove Zoo and an old couple in San Diego, USA. Apart from the old male in San Diego, all other animals are owned by the Dvur Kralove Zoo which is the only zoo that has been able to reproduce them.

Suni was one of the last two breeding males in the world and no northern white rhinos are known to have survived in the wild. Consequently the species now stands at the brink of complete extinction, a sorry testament to greed of the human race.

Dvur Kralove Zoo, together with Ol Pejeta Conservancy, IZW Berlin, AfRSG IUCN and Back to Africa, will continue to do what it can to work with the remaining animals in the hope that our efforts will one day result in the successful birth of a northern white rhino calf.

For more information please feel free to contact:

in Dvur Kralove Zoo: jan.stejskal(at)zoodk.cz
in Ol Pejeta Conservancy: richard.vigne(at)olpejetaconservancy.org

Photo: Jan Stejskal/Dvur Kralove Zoo