Northern White Rhino

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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, has died, putting his species on the brink of extinction

By Max Bearak March 20 at 4:39 AM

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A ranger takes care of Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia county in Kenya in May 2017. (AP)

Unable to stand, and suffering from a string of infections in his advanced age, the world’s last male northern white rhino was euthanized Monday by a veterinary team in Kenya that had fought for years to save him and his dwindling species. Only two now remain — his daughter, Najin, and granddaughter, Fatu — leaving in-vitro fertilization from preserved sperm as the last tool against extinction.

Sudan, who was 45 when he died, had unsuccessfully tried to mate with females from a related sub-species of rhino found in southern Africa. The second-to-last male, Suni, died in 2014, possibly from a heart attack. Both Sudan and Suni were likely too old to be fertile by the time they were brought to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya from a zoo in the Czech Republic in 2009.

“We at Ol Pejeta are all saddened by Sudan’s death. He was an amazing rhino, a great ambassador for his species, and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity,” Ol Pejeta Conservancy CEO Richard Vigne said in a statement. “One day, his demise will hopefully be seen as a seminal moment for conservationists worldwide.”

Sudan’s death comes as other rhino populations around the world teeter on the brink of extinction, largely due to poaching. Rhino horn has been highly prized in Chinese traditional medicine and as a decorative component of daggers carried by many Yemeni men. Around 30,000 rhinos from five species remain worldwide. Two species in Indonesia, the Sumatran and Javan rhinos, have around or less than 100 individuals.

A recent drop in the price of rhino horn did not come soon enough to save the northern white rhino from near-certain extinction. A 2016 study published in Swara magazine found that wholesale rhino horn prices had decreased in both China and Vietnam $65,000 per kilogram in 2012-13 to $30,000 to $35,000 per kilogram in 2015. Al Jazeera found that the price in China declined even further during 2016 to fewer than $29,000 per kilogram. Still, South Africa, home to the biggest population of rhinos in the world, has lost about 1,000 per year to poaching since 2013, according to WildAid.

Sudan was born in 1972 in what is now South Sudan at a time when there were still around 1,000 northern white rhinos roaming wild. But their habitat was then, as it remains today, one riven by human conflict. As my colleague Kevin Sieff wrote in a profile of Sudan in 2015, “They were concentrated in countries plagued by war: Sudan, Congo, the Central African Republic. When fighting broke out, the rhinos were also victims, killed for their meat or their horns, or sometimes exchanged for money or arms.”

But Sudan was saved from the grisly fate of other northern whites by representatives from Dvur Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic. At that time, when Sudan was just 3 years old, the extinction of his species did not seem imminent. Conservationists believed that interventions in which more northern whites were extracted from conflict-prone environments would stem their decline.

Instead, both conflict and poaching surged during the next few decades, and northern white rhinos paid the price. By 2003, there were thought to be only 20 left in the wild, all in Congo’s Garamba National Park. The Congolese government blocked plans to take any of them out of the country, and within a few years all of them had been killed.

Sudan spent the last years of his life under 24-hour protection from armed guards. His horn had been chopped off to deter poachers, though it had begun to grow back. His guards regularly foiled poaching attacks. But the effort to save the northern white rhino seems to have come too late for a real turnaround.

Ol Pejeta Conservancy estimates that the cost of in-vitro fertilization — from development of the method, to trials, implantation and the creation of a viable breeding herd of northern whites — could be as much as $9 million. In a press release, the conservancy said it is attempting an unprecedented intervention “to try and conduct the first-ever procedure to safely remove egg cells from remaining females, fertilize these with semen previously collected from northern white males, and insert the resulting embryos into female southern white rhinos acting as surrogates.”

“Sudan was the last northern white rhino that was born in the wild. His death is a cruel symbol of human disregard for nature and it saddened everyone who knew him,” said Jan Stejskal, director of international projects at the Dvur Králové Zoo.

“But we should not give up. We must take advantage of the unique situation in which cellular technologies are utilized for conservation of critically endangered species. It may sound unbelievable, but thanks to the newly developed techniques even Sudan could still have an offspring.”

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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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So sad!! :no: :no:


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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It really is. It also looks quite different from the SA ones. Hopefully they can manage to fertilize one of the females left.
But the effort to save the northern white rhino seems to have come too late for a real turnaround.
Always the same thing O/ I wonder if the same will happen further south -O-


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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That is really sad.
Flutterby wrote: Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:18 am his genetic material was collected yesterday and provides a hope for future attempts at reproduction of northern white rhinos through advanced cellular technologies.
Why not, but instead of recreating extinct species, we should try to save the ones that are not yet extinct. For this northern subspecies, it is unfortunately too late. Having a clone or even a mix-bred with southern White Rhino will never be the same as to have the original.


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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In any case they are too few to recreate the species :-(

Just now I am watching the bad news on TV. Even in Switzerland they are showing the bad news.


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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Pregnancy of rhino at US zoo could save subspecies

Friday 18 May 2018 - 8:38am

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File: A rhino at the San Diego Zoo in the US has been artificially inseminated in what is seen as a first step in saving the northern white species, of which only two females remain. Photo: Pexels / Casey Allen


LOS ANGELES - A southern white rhino at a California zoo has been impregnated through artificial insemination, in what could prove a major step in saving a nearly extinct close relative.

The rhino called Victoria was inseminated in March at the San Diego Zoo and the embryo will continue developing for about 14 months, meaning that the calf would be born in mid-2019.

"The pregnancy, created through artificial insemination with sperm from a male southern white rhino, is an important milestone in the ongoing work to develop the scientific knowledge required to genetically recover the northern white rhino, a distant subspecies of the southern white rhino," officials at the San Diego Institute for Conservation Research said in a statement.

"Only two northern white rhinos currently remain on Earth (unfortunately both are female)," the statement added.

Barbara Durrant, the director of reproductive sciences at the institute, said that while news of the pregnancy was something to celebrate, it was still too early to determine whether it would lead to the birth of a healthy rhino.

Artificial insemination of rhinos has rarely been attempted in zoos and there have been only a few births from this procedure in the past, the institute said.

It added that to reach the ultimate goal of successfully producing a northern white rhino, multiple steps must be accomplished.

"One of the first steps involves sequencing the genome of the northern white rhino to clarify the extent of genetic divergence from its closest relative, the southern white rhino," the statement said.

Another step requires conversion of cells preserved from 12 individual northern white rhinos to stem cells that could develop into sperm and eggs.

"There are many challenges ahead, but researchers are optimistic that a northern white rhino calf could be born from these processes within 10 to 15 years," the institute said. "This work also may be applied to other rhino species, including critically endangered Sumatran and Javan rhinos."

Sudan, the last male northern rhino, died in Kenya in March following a series of infections, leaving only two females of his subspecies alive.

Rhinos have few predators in the wild due to their size.

However, demand for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine and dagger handles in Yemen fueled a poaching crisis in the 1970s and 1980s that largely wiped out the northern white rhino population in Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad.

A final remaining wild population of about 20-30 rhinos in the Democratic Republic of Congo died out during fighting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2008 the northern white rhino was considered extinct in the wild.

https://www.enca.com/technology/pregnan ... bspecies-0


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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One of Time Magazine's top pics of 2018:


Joseph Wachira, 26, comforts Sudan, the last male Northern White Rhino on the planet, moments before he passed away in March. Ami Vitale—National Geographic Creative
q.jpg

Source: '2018 TOP 100 PHOTOS From the Editors of TIME'


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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:-( :-(


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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He was a big guy :-( :-(


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Re: Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies

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Kenyan scientists harvest eggs to save northern white rhinos
2019-08-25 14:54


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Northern white rhino. (File, AFP)


Scientists in Kenya say the northern white rhino is one step away from being saved from extinction.

On Thursday, they successfully carried out a ground-breaking procedure of harvesting eggs from the world’s only two surviving female northern white rhinos.

Sperm saved from the last living male northern white rhino, called Sudan, and a few others will be used to inseminate the eggs in an attempt to save the species.

Al Jazeera's Sara Khairat reports.

https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/keny ... s-20190824


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