The Media and the Northern White Rhino

Our feelings about the environment are affected by past experiences, culture, and daily events; however, the media has great power to influence peoples’ perceptions of what is happening to the environment. This is because the media can increase the public’s awareness of any given environmental issue by exposing and communicating them. Journalists have the power to investigate, document, and report their findings to start environmental movements. In addition, there is limitless amounts of information people could educate themselves with in regard to the environment and animal extinction; however, sometimes, the accuracy of knowledge may be questionable depending on who the source is. This is due to the fact that certain sectors of the news media are subjective in terms of what they present in their stories because the information they circulate heavily depends on who their audience is. On the subject of the Northern white rhino, for example, when the last male died in 2018, it was the end of a species. The Northern white rhino had become functionally extinct because the only two remaining Northern white rhinos are females with fertility issues (Yong, 2018). The news coverage of the extinction was widespread, and it was covered by mainstream media publications, such as The Guardian, CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, National Geographic, The Smithsonean, Scientific American, and other publications. It would be accurate to say that even though these media sources are popular with most people, they are more left leaning politically. While researching this paper, it was difficult to find any right-leaning media sources who had covered the extinction of the Northern white rhino. Therefore, this may be an indication of how environmental issues are extremely politicized, as the Republican party denies climate change. And it is impossible to say that the media does not form a part of people’s personal perceptions of the environment due to the fact that traditionally, left-leaning parties, such as the Green Party, or the more liberal leaning Democrat Party in the U.S, have always supported and run their platforms on environmental issues. Whereas, the Republican Party traditionally has sought to promote issues, like free market capitalism, deregulation of corporations, and have given very little support to environmental organizations. For example, it is unusual to see documentaries about animals on the brink of extinction on the Fox News channel, Hannity, Glen Beck, or Limbaugh, as they are more likely to produce content which merely trivializes animals. Consequently, the media is greatly responsible for educating the people, or at the very least exposing people to issues of great importance for the survival of the planet. 

Considering that one half of the American population gets their news from social media, such as Facebook, and it is likely to be presented in the form of brief and limited snippets, true knowledge of environmental problems might be very limited for these people (Pew Research Center, 2021). And social media allows its users to tailor their news experience, so they can customize their daily news feed and only see what they want to. In that case, the Northern white rhino’s extinction may just have been a trending topic on social media, so it would not have circulated as a topic of interest for very long. This is also due to the fact that other environmental issues have always been more widely reported, such as Climate Change and Global Warming. After Al Gore’s documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ came out, it raised public awareness of the issue on a global scale. 

Although the decline in the population of the Northern white rhino was largely caused by poaching, which never did cease even after the colonial era, it was a sign that biodiversity is disappearing. Consequently, the extinction of the Northern White Rhino is one more of the signs that ecosystems all over the planet are losing their balance. It is very meaningful that the Northern white rhino lived for thousands of years on earth, yet it did not become extinct by any catastrophic event, instead it was eradicated by humans.

Sudan was the last Northern white rhino male of his species.  He died of natural causes in 2018.  He is survived by two female Northern white rhinos at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy where Sudan lived out his last few years (Vitale, 2019). In the last decades, efforts to save the species by protection agencies and organizations were put into effect too late, and when the Northern white rhino was already coming close to extinction. The number of rhinos first decreased dramatically across Africa during colonial-era mass hunting, and habitat was turned over for agriculture, livestock, plantations and building developments. The poaching crisis in the 1970s and 1980s was incited by a demand for traditional Chinese medicine and Yemeni dagger handles, and this is when Northern white rhinos and black rhinos became extinct in Uganda under Idi Amin, and in the Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad (World Wildlife Fund). The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is working on ways to prevent the species’ full extinction. However, it is unlikely that this subspecies of the white rhino will ever reproduce naturally. The last remaining Northern white rhinos have all been inter-related, and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in rhinos is very complex, and has only yielded ten rhino births in the past. Consequently, IVF is unlikely to be successful in the two remaining females, both of whom have reproductive problems.

Ami Vitale is a National Geographic photographer who was the last photographer to capture Sudan on film. She met Sudan nine years ago when he was at a zoo in the Czech Republic, in the middle of pollution and humanity. Vitale said she thought it was so unfair that the rhino had survived thousands of years, but that he could not survive humans. Vitale says that she had mainly focused on the struggle of mankind, but that when she met animals on the verge of extinction, she decided to go into other subjects.  She says that she realized that all the issues she was covering, whether it be poverty or health, always depended on nature for a positive outcome.  Precisely because people depend on nature for their well-being, it is important to fight for the survival of rhinos. Rhinos are a keystone species which means that they transform the land around them substantially, and they significantly affect other organisms in the process, so they shape ecosystems (Save the Rhino). Without rhinos, the earth’s ecosystem becomes more vulnerable to climate change. 

The tragic extinction of the Northern white rhino is a reminder that the future of nature is the future of all humans. The end of a species has repercussions on other animals and humanity. Humanity must stop the same fate from happening to the Northern white rhino’s cousins: the Javan and Sumatran rhinos. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), these remaining rhino populations are critically small. The WWF is helping to shore up anti-poaching efforts, monitoring the illegal trade of rhino horns, and promoting controlled and sustainable logging to help manage protected land. People can take measures and be prepared to save the critically endangered rhinos by working with local communities to raise awareness so that native peoples can preserve and protect their way of life, landscape and wildlife. Strict protection of rhinos, and creating a feeling of stewardship in the local people, offer the most hope for the survival of all wildlife (Ol Pejeta Conservancy, 2018). In the case of the Northern white rhino, the media did not support this environmental campaign by connecting people locally and around the world early enough to save the rhino, but rather as a news item when it was too late. 

The end of the Northern white rhino was made known by the mass media, but the demise of the species, and the issue of animal extinction has not become more urgent in the eyes of the people or in governments all around the world. This may be due to the fact that animal extinction is not on the media’s agenda as a priority topic. In addition, people may consider themselves to be far removed from the issue of animal extinction, consider it to be a wicked problem which persists, or that the balance of biodiversity is something they cannot solve, so governments never feel the need to take proper and urgent action because their constituents never demand it. Finally, because the media has so much power in determining peoples’ attitudes and behavior towards nature, by broadcasting more information regarding the safeguarding of animal species and their habitat, governments might be more compelled to pass legislative action to protect wildlife because the media has influenced peoples’ demands and expectations, and governments will need to respond. 

References

Can We Save the Rhino. (2018, March). Save the Rhino International, London.

savetherhino.org/thorny-issues/can-we-save-the-northern-white-rhino/.

Cox, R., Pezzullo, P. (2018) Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere, Chapter Five: Environmental Journalism, 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, Ca., Sage Publications. 

Huijbregts, Bas. White Rhino Facts. World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C.  worldwildlife.org/species/white-rhino. 

Mitchell, A., Shearer, E. (2021) News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2020. Pew Research Center, Washington D.C. 

The Last Northern White Male Rhino Dies. (2018, March). Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Nanyuki, Kenya. olpejetaconservancy.org/the-last-male-northern-white-rhino-dies/.

Vitale, A. (2019, October). What I Learned Documenting the Last Male Northern White Rhino’s Death. National Geographic. Vol. 236 (4), Washington D.C., The National Geographical Society. 

Yong, E. (2018, March). The Last Male Northern White Rhino is Dead. The Atlantic, Washington, D.C., The Atlantic Monthly Group.