One of Last Remaining Northern White Rhinos "Retired" From Breeding Project to Save their Species

Scientists working to resurrect the near-extinct northern white rhinoceros said on Thursday that they would no longer be collecting eggs from one of the two surviving living individuals in an extraordinary breeding experiment.

Northern White Rhinoceros

The northern white rhinoceros, also known as the northern square-lipped rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), is one of two subspecies of white rhinoceros (the other being the southern white rhinoceros). This subspecies is a grazer in grasslands and savanna woods and was once prevalent in numerous nations in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara. However, only two rhinos of this subspecies exist as of March 19, 2018, and their names are Najin and Fatu.

The subspecies is classified as "Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct in the Wild)" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in its most recent assessment from 2020.

Najin and Fatu

Biorescue said it has chosen to withdraw the elder of the two ladies, 32-year-old Najin, as an egg cell donor for the ambitious project due to risk and safety concerns.

As a result, Fatu, Najin's daughter and the world's only other northern white rhino is the lone donor for a campaign to conserve the functionally extinct species.

"Weighing the risks and benefits for individuals and the species as a whole made this option unavoidable," Biorescue stated in a statement.

Artificial Reproduction

Since 2019, a global partnership has been collecting eggs from Najin and Fatu in preparation for a first-of-its-kind assisted reproduction program in rhinos.

They were anesthetized for over two hours, and their eggs were removed using procedures that took years of study and development. Then, a team of international veterinarians operated on them.

Using sperm from two separate deceased guys, the eggs were flown to an Italian lab for fertilization, development, and preservation.

In July, the collaboration reported that they had produced three more subspecies embryos, increasing the total to 12.

However, the viable embryos all come from the younger rhinos, and the program, despite the precautions taken, is not without hazards, according to Jan Stejskal, head of international programs at Safari Park Dvur Kralovs, where Najin was born in 1989.

"She will continue to be a part of the program," Stejskal said, "for example, by supplying tissue samples for stem cell methods that can be done with minimum invasion."

Because neither Fatu nor Najin can take a calf to term, embryo surrogate moms will be chosen from a population of southern white rhinos.

The beautiful creatures' only hope of survival is via reproduction.

Sudan, the last male, died in 2018 in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where Najin and Fatu are guarded 24 hours a day.

Rhinos in the Wild

Rhinos have few natural predators, but poaching has devastated their populations since the 1970s.

Modern rhinos have been on the earth for 26 million years, and more than a million were thought to be roaming the wild in the mid-nineteenth century.

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