![]() ![]() But that success didn’t translate to their northern relatives. The subspecies' numbers recovered strongly: Around 20,000 southern white rhinos exist today. It’s a different story with the closely related southern white rhinos, who also faced existential peril in past decades. The last known sighting of a northern white rhino in the wild dates back to 2006. Between 19, one paper estimates their population fell as much as 80 percent, to 50 individuals or fewer. Their numbers, already reduced by hunters and poachers, fell to critical levels in the early 1980s due to demand for their horns (which people have used for traditional medicine and flaunted as status symbols). Northern white rhinos once lived in the grasslands of East and Central Africa, where their population ranged in the hundreds of thousands. The species, long in the balance between existence and extinction, still lives in limbo. Experts are currently hashing out these issues in real time, even as researchers forge ahead with plans to birth and raise new northern white rhinos. The northern white rhino project raises tough questions about humans’ role in the natural world, as well as what it means when we lose a species. Not all scientists are on board with the idea, though. Revitalizing charismatic animals like northern white rhinos could eventually represent the vanguard of our efforts to save Earth’s biodiversity from ourselves. ![]() In this light, it’s easy to see why some researchers hope to bring back vanished species. ![]() Fewer of them translates to increasingly paltry choices when expanding our store of knowledge. A given species also represents a unique opportunity to study the natural world and learn more about how flora and fauna work in tandem. When one disappears, it takes the legacy of countless unknown ancestors with it. More broadly, each creature seen on Earth has resulted from hundreds of millions of years of evolution. ![]()
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