The lockdowns are having a detrimental impact on the world's most endangered animal: northern white rhinos. Travel restrictions in countries are resulting in wildlife conservationists being unable to travel to Africa to continue work to help save the species.
What Work Is Being Done To Save Them?
Northern white rhinos are so rare and near extinction that only two of them remain today.
Both of the northern white rhinos which are existing today are females. The last male northern white rhino died in 2018. Scientists have been working on trying to save northern white rhinos from at least the start of the year, through frozen sperm left from one of the last male northern white rhinos and embryos from the two remaining female northern white rhinos.
Things were going well before the lockdowns began, as in January this year, scientists managed to create new embryos of the species. However, lockdown restrictions have since prevented people from working to help save these animals from travelling, as travel restrictions were put in place in Germany and the Czech Republic in March. Scientists from both Germany and the Czech Republic have been working to help the rhinos which are in Kenya, which means they couldn't travel.
Scientists from Italy have also been working to save the northern white rhino, but the country was also put into a strict lockdown which prevented people from travelling.
Due to the strict lockdowns, preventing scientists from travelling from Europe to Africa has not just put on hold vital work to help save these critically endangered rhinos, it has also hasten their extinction. The last two females were 30 and 19 years of age last year, which means that time is quickly running out to save this animal from extinction.
The good news is that the last two females are heavily protected. Both of them are protected by armed guard 24/7 to protect them from being killed by poachers.
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