On Bad Choices: One More For The List

I was browsing through my daily news sites when I came upon something that made my heart sink a little more. Let me share the excerpt from the news article:

LUSAKA (AFP) - Poachers have shot the last two white rhinos in Zambia, killing one and wounding the other, in a night operation at the Mosi-Oa-Tunya national park in Livingstone, an official said Tuesday. The shooting of the two endangered animals in a heavily-guarded zoological park near Victoria Falls in Zambia's tourist resort town of Livingstone took place last week. "I can confirm that one of the white rhinos was shot dead by suspected poachers. The other one was wounded and is undergoing treatment," said Maureen Mwape, spokesperson of the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), which would be investigating the shooting. The dead female rhino's horn was apparently removed. Zambia's white rhinos were all killed by poachers but the government managed to acquire six from South Africa in 1993, of which the injured male is the last to survive.

I can recall being in elementary and middle school discussing how we lost the Wooly Mammoth, the Sabre Tooth Tiger, the Dodo and so on... Each of those animals seemed more mythical than real to me. Their passing had occured long before anyone my age was born and had little impact on my life. We lost these creatures in my lifetime; They're existence is a tangible (for now) truth. Now a lone bull is on the brink of recovery and regardless of the outcome, he is the last of his kind. One could sway many an opinion in support of cloning with a story like this... One could.