Single Rhino Tasked With Saving Entire Subspecies From Extinction
Najin, one of the world's last two northern white rhinos, is being retired from a breeding program created to save the species from extinction, according to Reuters. Her daughter Fatu is now the sole egg donor for the program and the subspecies' last hope for survival.
The last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died at a conservancy in Kenya in 2018.
When Sudan died, the only hope of saving the northern white rhino was through in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques using stored semen samples from other males, which were collected before they died, and eggs from Najin and Fatu. Embryos developed from that technique would be transplanted into rhinos of another species in Kenya. Neither Najin nor Fatu "can carry a calf to term," Reuters reported.
Under the leadership of researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, science consortium BioRescue has been working diligently to extract egg cells from the mother-daughter pair.
On Thursday, however, BioRescue announced in a public statement its decision to retire Najin as an egg donor.
According to the statement, the team managed to collect a few eggs from Najin over the years, but none of them were viable. Additionally, a recent ultrasound also revealed benign tumors in her cervix and uterus, as well as a "large cystic structure 25 cm in diameter in her left ovary."
"This is why we came to the conclusion that the most valuable role for Najin is to be an ambassador for the conservation of her kind and to ensure that she can transfer her social knowledge and behavior to offspring in the foreseeable future," said BioRescue in a statement.
Because Najin represents half of the subspecies, the decision to retire her was not easy. But scientists are hopeful that Fatu can save the northern white rhino from extinction.
"We have been very successful with Fatu," David Ndeereh, the acting deputy director for research at the Wildlife Research and Training Institute, told Reuters. "So far we have 12 pure northern white rhino embryos.
"We are very optimistic that the project will succeed," he continued.
Newsweek reached out to BioRescue for additional information but did not hear back in time for publication.
The decline of the subspecies can be attributed to a variety of factors, Newsweek previously reported. Those factors include poaching and "civil war in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo."
Currently, there are 10,080 white rhinos left in the wild, but the IUCN Red List says that the species' population trend is decreasing.
