“Milestone” in efforts to save rare rhino species

Scientists say they have reached a “milestone” in the effort to save the endangered northern white rhino. According to information on Wednesday, researchers from the Biorescue project have succeeded for the first time in successfully transferring an embryo created through artificial insemination into a rhinoceros.

So it is a southern white rhino into which an embryo of the same species has been implanted. However, according to the researchers, this technique could also help its northern relative in the future, of which there are only two females left.

The southern white rhino embryo was created in vitro from eggs and sperm and transferred to a surrogate mother in Kenya in September. The rhino was pregnant for 70 days before dying from a bacterial infection. The male embryo, which was over six centimeters in size, was well developed.

“We have achieved something that was not thought possible,” project manager Thomas Hildebrandt told journalists in Berlin. The fertilization of a southern white rhino with an embryo of the same species is a “milestone” on the path to helping its critically endangered northern cousins.

Since 2019, the Biorescue conservation program has produced 30 northern white rhino embryos and preserved them in liquid nitrogen, where they await transfer to surrogate mothers.

In the next step of the ambitious breeding program, scientists want to try to transfer the embryo of a northern white rhino to a surrogate mother of the closely related southern species. The reproductive program is the animals’ last chance for survival. None of the remaining northern white rhinos – mother Najin and daughter Fatu – are able to give birth.

The last male, named Sudan, died in 2018 at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where Najin and Fatu are kept under 24-hour surveillance to protect them from poachers. In addition, cells from twelve different northern white rhinos are stored in liquid nitrogen.

According to Hildebrandt, the research team has set itself the goal of producing northern white rhino calves “in the next two to two and a half years.” It may also take longer. According to the expert, the technology could also serve as a model for other endangered rhino species, such as the Sumatran rhino in Southeast Asia.

Rhinos have very few natural predators, but their numbers have been decimated by poaching since the 1970s. It is estimated that more than a million lived in the wild until the mid-19th century.

The BioRescue project, led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, is developing and testing technologies to improve the breeding success of southern white rhinos under human care and to save the northern white rhino from extinction. (sda/afp)