Last: The Story of a White Rhino

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Some wealthy westerners “who are not interested in bog standard conservation” are getting very excited by far more expensive “techno-utopian approaches”, adds Herridge. Today, they number about 15,000 across protected areas and private game reserves where they are hunted, but also managed to ensure their population remains stable.

After this rescue and rehabilitation, she has gone on to give birth to multiple babies and wears her facial scars with pride.Armed conflict across Central Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s wiped out most of the remaining northern white rhinos except for a small population in Garamba National Park in DRC. This deeply poignant tale - based on the true story of Sudan, the last male white rhino - is a must-have for any classroom! is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organization (tax ID number 52-1693387) under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. He looks around him and sees others who are also the last one of their kind--giraffe, monkey, bear, and bird.

The pictures capture the contrast between the naturalness of the bright life in the wild, shown in colour illustrations, and the very grey Shaun Tan-like dystopian cityscape, a world of shadows, where the rooftop zoo of captivity is based. It would, after all, be a phenomenal achievement after the northern white population plummeted from several hundred thousand across Uganda, Sudan, Chad and Central African Republic to near extinction in little over a century.The author’s afterword tells us that this book was inspired by the true story of Sudan, one of the last Northern White Rhinos in the world. Furthermore, she inscribes her pictures with advertising slogans, inspirational quotes, translations, that imbue them with a civilisation at odds with Sudan’s origins.

The multilingual approach emphasises the universality of the need to engage with environmental issues. Here is the author’s message at the beginning of the book: ‘I believe the world can change for the better, but it will change one heart at a time. Deceptively simple but subtle, this is an inspirational story to use with young children, dealing as it does with complex issues in a way that will open the door to much discussion. The White rhino was mostly safe in this small pocket and by the 1950s, the population had grown to over 400.The text and the illustrations together make the reader aware of the contrast between the life of the rhino before and during captivity.