Zakouma

Elephants at Zakouma (NYTimes photo)

Elephants are doing better in Chad at Zakouma National Park.  And six black rhinos have come to Zakouma this month from South Africa.  These are successes.

www.african-parks.org/the-parks/zakouma 

See also:  The New York Times Sunday Travel: May 20 2018,
"Killing Field to Haven,"  a wonderful account by Rachel Nuwer of her visit to Zakouma.

REST IN PEACE, SUDAN

  
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/rhino-sudan-extinct.html




We love you and we will miss you.

Sudan the Rhino

Yesterday, Sudan's health had improved slightly; he seemed to savor a mud bath in the rain, his caretakers said.  Sudan is 45 years old, and since 2009 he and two females--Najin and Fatu--have lived at Ol Pejeta Reserve in Kenya, cared for and protected 24 hours a day.
Sudan is the last surviving Northern White Rhinoceros.
You can view him here:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43300713
I have made a sketch of him: the sketch channels, a bit, life, I hope.

Refugee

sketch of Tamba

This is probably Tamba, the more dominant of the two males.  Jasiri was nearby.  They are Southern White Rhinoceroses, now living at the Detroit Zoo.  Tamba in Swahili means "strut proudly," Jasiri means "courageous."  Tamba was getting his legs massaged with a lineament, from the fetlocks down, by his zookeeper caretaker when I was there. With such bodyweight loaded onto their legs, Rhinos challenge zoos to replicate a soft/hard mix for their pen's floor upon which they walk around every day.  (And of course the floor must be maintained/cleaned up every day.  Gosh.)

I think Detroit Zoo is doing a good job.  Probably really good.  You can see and even think about helping with the Rhinos at the Detroit Zoo here:  https://detroitzoo.org/rhinos/

Watching the Rhinos, I felt like the world was there, in the pen with me.  Big world made to be this: creatures in the same space trying to enjoy the space together.  This is our challenge in this century isn't it:  making a good home for us All:  refugees, caretakers, onlookers, ignorers, All.

Power

I saw this field of winter cover crop, with a line of thaw, and some remnant of corn stubble. Thousands of rye seedlings -> one powerful color.

Sister Mary and I walked Saturday through a savanna near the Kankakee River watershed.  The ground there is already softening.  These clumps of wintered grass dotted a patch of ground between the savanna and a railroad bed.  They are as powerful as stumps, little plant mammoths.

Rhinoceroses are big, the second largest land mammal after elephants. They have very small eyes, and their eyesight is poor; still, no one says they are not powerful.  There are two southern white rhinos at the Detroit Zoo.  Will I ever see them as they are?

I put a rhino in the treeline of the rye field sketch.  If we live with them well, this gives power, yes?