Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Last male northern white rhino dies in Kenya

The world's last surviving male northern white rhino has died after months of poor health, his carers say. "Once his condition worsened significantly and he was unable to stand up and evidently, suffered a great deal, the decision to euthanize him was made by his veterinary team," according to an official statement from the Ol Pejeta Conservancy website. — AFP

NAIROBI: Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, has died in Kenya at the age of 45, after becoming a symbol of efforts to save his subspecies from extinction, a fate that only science can now prevent. Other attempts to conserve some of the northern white rhino genes by mating 27-year-old Najin and her 17-year-old daughter Fatu with a southern white male also failed. Sudan was unable to breed with the female rhinos in captivity, and his plight came to the world's attention last year when the Ol Pejeta Conservancy signed up Sudan for Tinder in search of an eligible mate and to raise funds for research into breeding methods. When Sudan was born in 1973 in the wild in Shambe, South Sudan, there were about 700 of his kind left in existence. The only hope for preserving the subspecies "now lies in developing in vitro fertilization techniques using eggs from the two remaining females, stored northern white rhino semen from males and surrogate southern white rhino females," the statement said. "It's very sad to lose Sudan because it shows clearly the extent of human greed and what sort of impact humans beings can have on nature," Samuel Mutisya, head of wildlife conservation at Ol Pejeta, told Reuters on Monday.
Sudan, the last known male Northern white rhinoceros, dies in captivity, leaving two females as the only surviving members of the subspecies.