Northern white rhino
This month the conservation spotlight falls on the world’s most endangered mammal.
What’s the problem?
Northern white rhinos have been poached to the point of practical extinction. Until recently, there were three left, but the last male, named Sudan, was euthanised in Kenya, in March, for agerelated health reasons. All that remain are two females, Najin and Fatu.
But there’s still hope?
We’ve managed to create hybrid embryos using female northern white rhino eggs and southern white rhino sperm. This proves we can do the same using frozen sperm taken from Sudan before he died. Four million people have been created by in vitro fertilisation. But you can’t apply these methods to rhinos. The ovaries are buried too deep within the body. We’ve had to develop a totally new approach to harvesting eggs without threatening the health or lives of the females.
What challenges remain?
There’s a critical time constraint. Such a complex species is a product of more than its genes. To survive in central Africa, they need to grow up with other northern white rhinos. So we are really under pressure to produce the first calf while Najin and Fatu are sti ill around.
What’s the plan?
We’re aiming to have the first hybrid embryo pregnancy by the end of the year. Sixteen months later, we hope to have a calf. Hybrids contain 50 per cent of the northern white rhino genome, so we’d have a useful insurance against further losses. We’re waiting for the final go-ahead from the Kenyan government to do the same with pure northern white embryos. That should be solved in the next few months, and we’re aiming for the first birth in three years’ time.
Will it happen?
People tend to think this sort of highprofile conservation research is well funded. Actually the opposite is true. Our project is running on an extremely small budget, without any funding from governments or conservation NGOs. To produce a viable group of northern white rhino, we need about €4m. SB
THOMAS HILDEBRANDT is professor at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Germany.
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