(Image credit: Bella Falk)
Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya is home to the planet’s last two northern white rhinos – but the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy could offer hope for this nearly extinct subspecies.
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A century ago, more than half a million rhinos roamed the grasslands of Africa and Asia. Today, these beloved herbivores, with their armored skins, disgruntled expressions and prehistoric-looking horns, have become an emblem of the wildlife crisis: decimated by poaching and habitat loss, their numbers declined by 95% to only about 27,000. global.
Almost all now live in national parks and reserves like Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where they can be protected from poachers who target them for their horns, highly prized in Asian medicine.
One subspecies, the northern white rhino, is already functionally extinct: only two remain, both living under 24-hour armed guard here in Ol Pejeta.
But this week, scientists working with them announced a remarkable breakthrough in the fight to save these magnificent animals. In a major breakthrough, they used IVF to impregnate a female southern white rhino, a close relative of the northern white rhino. This is the first time IVF has been used successfully in rhinos, and a big step forward in the mission to bring northern white rhinos back from the brink.
Straddling the equator, in the shadow of Mount Kenya, Ol Pejeta’s vast expanse of open grassland and tangled bush covers 360 square kilometers, roughly the size of Philadelphia or Dublin.
The reserve was once a cattle ranch owned by notorious billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. However, in 1988 it was taken over and transformed into a small wildlife reserve focused on protecting rhinos. It was later purchased by the non-profit Fauna and Flora International and has now expanded to become the largest black rhino sanctuary in East Africa.
Ol Pejeta, whose name means “burnt grass” in the Maasai language, is located on a plateau at approximately 1,800 m above sea level. Here, the equatorial heat is tempered by a milder climate, ideal for the hundred species of mammals and 500 species of birds that live here.
Besides the rhinos for which it is celebrated, the reserve has one of the highest predator densities in Kenya, with 100 lions in seven prides, as well as cheetahs, leopards, elephants, hippos, buffalo and many other iconic African animals.
But the real success is the rhinos. Ol Pejeta is home to 165 critically endangered black rhinos, 52 southern white rhinos (pictured) and the last two remaining northern white rhinos. All are monitored 24/7 by an armed rhino protection team, supported by a wider team of rangers and a K9 dog unit.
This protection is expensive: it costs around $850 a month to protect a single rhino, but it works. They haven’t lost a rhino to poaching in over five years.
Although they are called “black” and “white”, all African rhinos are gray. The name has nothing to do with color – an oft-repeated theory is that the word “white” comes from the Dutch word “wijd“, meaning “broad”. Dutch settlers in South Africa reportedly saw the wide, square mouth of the white rhino, and the name stuck. Black rhinoceroses, which have a narrower, pointed upper lip, were so named to differentiate them from their “white” counterparts.
White rhinos are more sociable and tend to hang out in groups. Black rhinos are more solitary and can often be aggressive, as I learned when this one lunged straight at our car.
All of Ol Pejeta’s rhinos are precious, but the most precious are 34-year-old Najin and her daughter Fatu. They are the last two northern white rhinos, a subspecies of white rhino that once thrived throughout central Africa before being wiped out by poaching.
Najin and Fatu were brought from a Czech zoo to Ol Pejeta in 2009, along with two males called Soudan and Suni. At the time, they were four of seven Northern Whites still alive, and scientists hoped Kenya’s climate and rich grasslands would encourage them to produce a calf after the zoo’s breeding program failed.
To ensure their safety and good health, the four rhinos were placed in a dedicated 700-acre enclosure under 24-hour armed surveillance and fed a nutritious diet. Unfortunately, although Najin mated with Suni, she did not become pregnant, and Suni and Soudan later died, as did the last remaining Northern Whites in other zoos.
Today, Najin and Fatu are the only two survivors, living in the same protected enclosure, with a handful of southern white females for company.
Head goalkeeper Zachary Mutai has been looking after Ol Pejeta’s Northern Whites for 14 years and has a special bond with the ladies. “I’m very grateful to be able to care for the last two of their species,” he said, “but at the same time, it’s a huge weight on my shoulders because they need special care and the world everyone looks at them.”
Visitors to Ol Pejeta can meet Najin and Fatu, accustomed to human company and very friendly. Coming face to face from the open window of a safari car, I was surprised by the emotion I felt. It’s emotional to be so close to a wild creature, but being able to see an animal up close that represents humanity’s destruction of the planet, just before its species became extinct, is a moment that will stay with me for a long time.
But perhaps all is not completely lost. For several years, scientists from the international Biorescue Project consortium have been working to save the species. By taking sperm from two of the last males before they died and eggs from 23-year-old Fatu, they managed to create 30 frozen northern white embryos. Due to age and health reasons, none of the females can carry a pregnancy, so experts are considering using southern white females as surrogate mothers.
IVF on rhinos has never been done before and is “very difficult in such a large animal, in terms of placing an embryo inside the reproductive tract, which is almost 2 meters away.” the inside of the animal”, Susanne Holtze, scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoos and Zoos. Wildlife Research in Germany, part of the Biorescue project, told BBC News.
Before using their precious northern white embryos, the team wanted to test the process with southern whites. It took 13 attempts, but for the first time, they finally succeeded. Unfortunately, both mother and fetus died after the female contracted a bacterial infection, but the successful gestation lasted 70 days and an autopsy showed that the male calf had developed well.
The pregnancy may have ended tragically, but this success brings scientists closer to their goal of creating a new baby northern white rhino. With such a small gene pool, it won’t be enough to save the species, but scientists hope the next step will be to use stem cells to create new rhino sperm and eggs, which will then be used to make new embryos .
Meanwhile, 2024 is the year to visit Ol Pejeta and meet stars Najin and Fatu before it’s too late.
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