There, I witnessed the last remnants of several species: a handful of Grevy’s zebra, a reticulated giraffe, a cheetah, and – just beyond an electric fence and armed guards - the last three northern white rhinos. Before heading to our field work further north, we drove into the Ol Pejeta Conservancy after a brief but violent rainstorm. I n November 2015, I joined an NGO focused on ending extreme poverty for women in Nanyuki, Kenya. Though Suni is dead and Fatu cannot conceive, science has christened this couple the future of the northern white rhino. His sperm is considered healthier than that collected from the aged Sudan.) After eight of Fatu’s eggs were fertilized, two were deemed viable, and were cryofrozen on Christmas Eve, bringing the total frozen embryo count to five. (Though he died of natural causes in 2014, Suni’s sperm was collected when he was still relatively young. Once in Italy, Fatu’s eggs were matured and combined with frozen sperm from Suni, a bull born in 1980. They were overnighted via a charter flight from Nairobi to Frankfurt to Milan, then driven to the Avantea laboratory in Cremona, Italy. Thus, Fatu’s eggs are better traveled than any of us in 2021.

Though sperm can be frozen, unfertilized eggs cannot. In December, BioRescue harvested 14 egg cells from Fatu using an ultrasound-guided probe. Rhino caregiver James Mwenda spends his days taking care of the northern white rhinos along with 10 other dedicated rangers. Najin’s hind legs are weak and veterinarians believe a pregnancy – 16 months of depleted resources for the mother and a 100kg baby – would cause debilitating stress. In 2014, scientists discovered that 20-year-old Fatu cannot conceive naturally, and recently that her mother Najin has a large tumor in her abdomen next to her left ovary, potentially compromising the egg harvesting process. Ol Pejeta employs intense security measures against the constant threat of poaching: armed rangers, electric fences, the specialized K-9 unit, motion sensor cameras, and airplane surveillance. There are no longer any living northern white rhino males after the beloved Sudan was humanely euthanized at the advanced age of 45 in 2018. How we answer this question not only determines the rhinos’ future, but our ability to pioneer processes that will be called upon to preserve other species. They wondered if they would be able to harvest more egg cells from Fatu and the aging Najin and get them to a laboratory in Italy during a global pandemic.īut given the cost and complexity – should they?

“It’s the moral thing to do,” he says.Ĭovid-19 thwarted BioRescue’s 2019 momentum, disrupting travel and diverting science funding. Hildebrandt believes increased international cooperation is the future of conservation, sharing resources without the expectation of payback. He spearheaded “BioRescue” – a collaboration between the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, Italian laboratory Avantea, and Kenya’s Ol Pejeta and Kenya Wildlife Service. But, inspired by an interdisciplinary conference on interstellar life, Hildebrandt used grant money to forge an international consortium dedicated to saving the species. “In 2012, there was no hope for the northern white rhino,” Dr Thomas Hildebrandt, a Berlin-based expert in wildlife reproduction, tells me. Scientists now have a last-minute chance to bring the northern white rhinos back from the void, thanks to stem cell breakthroughs – but only if they can manage to work through the constraints of the pandemic.

Northern white rhinoceros extinct