He was the world’s most eligible bachelor with tons of efforts being made to ensure his safety. As fate would have it, Sudan, the last northern white rhino male died in March 2018 at his home in Ol Pajeta Conservatory in Kenya.
Semen was collected in 2014 when Sudan was over 40 years old.
What followed have been efforts by scientists to ensure there is a continuation of the white rhino generation. So far, two embryos have been passed on to females and a third one has just been released.
In August 2019 a team of scientists and conservationists broke new ground in saving the northern white rhinoceros from extinction when they harvested eggs from the two remaining females, artificially inseminated those using frozen sperm from deceased males and created two viable northern white rhino embryos.
With great support from the Kenyan Government and in the presence of Hon Najib Balala, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, the team repeated the procedure, and was able to create a new embryo over Christmas.
This significantly increases the chances of successfully producing offspring. The procedure has proven to be safe and reproducible, and can be performed on a regular basis before the animals become too old. Preparations for the next steps of the northern white rhino rescue mission are underway.
The egg collection, embryo creation and preparation for the embryo transfer is a joint effort by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), Avantea, DvůrKrálové Zoo, Ol Pejeta Conservancy and the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). The entire process is part of the “BioRescue” research.
Four months after the groundbreaking first “ovum pickup” in August 2019, the team repeated the procedure with northern white rhinos Najin and Fatu on December 17, 2019, at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. The animals were placed under general anesthetic and nine immature egg cells (oocytes) – three from Najin and six from Fatu – were harvested from the animals’ ovaries using a probe guided by ultrasound.
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Hon. NajibBalala, stated, “As a government, we are glad that the northern white rhino in-vitro fertilisation project by a consortium of scientists and conservationists from Kenya, Czech Republic, Germany and Italy collaborative partnerships has been able to successfully produce three pure northern white rhino embryos ready for implantation into southern white rhino as surrogate mothers in the coming months.”
He noted that this is a big win for Kenya and its partners, as the northern white rhinos are faced with the threat of imminent extinction, with only two of them, females Najin and Fatu, are left in the entire world and are currently hosted by Kenya.
Preparations for the next steps of the mission for saving the northern white rhino from extinction are underway simultaneously to the creation of embryos. The plan is to select a group of southern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta Conservancy from which a female could serve as surrogate mother for the northern white rhino embryo.
Thomas Hildebrandt, Head Department of Reproduction Management, Leibniz-IZW said, “Our repeated success in generating a third embryo from Fatu demonstrates that the BioRescue program is on the right track. Now, the team will make every effort to achieve the same result for 30-year-old Najin before it is too late for her.
To achieve the best possible results for work with pure northern white rhino embryos, the team relies on experience from similar embryo transfer procedures in southern white rhinos that have been performed in order to address reproduction challenges in European zoos.
Despite the fact that more research is still needed, the team expects that a first attempt for this crucial, never before achieved step, may be undertaken in 2020.
The procedure is delicate, according to Jan Stejskal, Director of International Projects, DvůrKrálové Zoo “We don’t know how many embryos we will need to achieve a successful birth of a new northern white rhino calf. That’s why every embryo is so important and why a long-term cooperation between scientists, experts in zoos and conservationists in the field is a crucial element if we want to give hope to a species that would otherwise become extinct in a few years.”
With the experiments going on, it is expected to take a few more decades to see descendants of Sudan, roaming the plains where their ancestor once lived.
