Nabiré, a 31-year-old female northern white rhino died on Monday, July 27 at the Dvůr Králové Zoo, Czech Republic. To those who cared for her, she was known for having one of the gentlest demeanors of the rhinos to be bred at the Czech zoo.
Her loss was indeed a tragic one, not just because of the shared sentiment for her among the zoo’s staff, but due to the fact that she was one of the remaining five northern white rhinos in the world.
“It is a terrible loss. Nabiré was the kindest rhino ever bred in our zoo. It is not just that we were very fond of her. Her death is a symbol of the catastrophic decline of rhinos due to a senseless human greed. Her species is on the very brink of extinction,” Přemysl Rabas, Dvůr Králové ‘s director, stated on the zoo’s website.
Nabiré was born on November 15, 1983 and lived her life at the Dvůr Králové zoo, located just under 90 miles northeast of Prague. Her death was due to a ruptured cyst.
“The pathological cyst inside the body of Nabiré was huge. There was no way to treat it,” said Jiří Hrubý, a rhino curator of the zoo.
Northern white rhinos were last seen in the wild in central Africa in 2007, as they have been poached to extinction. Their disappearance has been driven by demand for their horns, which are used for medical and cultural purposes in some countries of East Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.
The Dvůr Králové Zoo was able to prolong the very presence of northern white rhino on our planet due to their 40 years of breeding efforts. The last surviving male lives in Kenya with two females, Nájin and Fatu. One other female, Nola, lives in San Diego, according to the Czech zoo.
