Extinction looms: Angalifu, the northern white rhino that died recently.

With the death at San Diego Zoo Safari Park of a northern white rhino, the species is five animals away from extinction. The death on Sunday of Angalifu, a 44-year-old male northern white rhino, leaves one elderly female at the park, three in a Kenyan preserve and one at a Czech Republic zoo.

There were more than 2,000 northern whites in 1960, according to the World Wildlife Fund, but poachers cut intothe population. By 1984, there were about 15 left. That population was doubled by 1993 through aggressive conservation efforts. But heavily-armed poaching gangs have now virtually annihilated the species, the WWF says.

Poachers are known to use helicopters, guns with silencers and night-vision equipment to harvest rhino horns, for which there is huge demand in Asia - particularly in Vietnam and China, where the horn is consumed as aphrodisiac and general pick-me-up. Rhino horn can sell for as much as $US30,000 a half-kilogram.

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The penalties for poaching these endangered animals are not nearly as severe as the penalties for selling drugs. It's a deadly formula for the rhinos.

The white rhino - which has southern and northern subspecies - is the largest of all the rhino species and is the second-largest mammal on land, after the African elephant. The white rhino can reach1.8 metresin height at the shoulder, with females weighing about  1600 kilograms and males nearly 3,600. . The head of the rhino alone can weigh as much as 450 kilograms..

Conservation efforts with southern white rhinos have been effective. The San Diego Zoo Safari Park boasts the most successful captive breeding program for rhinos anywhere on the globe. But the program for the northern white rhino hasn't been so successful.

San Diego was unable to breed Angalifu and Nola, the female northern white rhino in San Diego. Efforts at breeding rhinos at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya also have failed.

Angalifu died of ailments related to old age, according to the safari park, and had been in decline. He had not eaten for days.

"Angalifu's death is a tremendous loss to all of us," safari park curator of mammals Rancy Reiches said.

Los Angeles Times