Last hope for vanishing white rhinos

By Robin McKie
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Tuesday, Mar 06, 2007, Page 16

A new born southern white rhino calf rests next to his mother Lulu at Budapest Zoo. PHOTOS: AGENCIES

In a small Berlin laboratory, Robert Hermes is testing instruments that would do credit to a James Bond villain. He has metal probes, giant syringes and a set of electrodes that would embarrass an Abu Ghraib jailer.

This fearsome collection has a benign purpose, however, for Hermes intends to use it to save the world's most endangered large mammal: the northern white rhino, whose breeding population has been wiped out in the wild and consists, in captivity, of just two females in a Czech zoo.

A program that includes artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and sex-selection of embryos is to be launched this year, led by Hermes, a zoologist at Berlin's Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, and his colleagues Frank Goritz and Thomas Hildebrandt. If this team, working with other groups in several European zoos, succeed, they will have pulled off one of the most extraordinary feats in wildlife conservation. Most experts assume the northern white is doomed and will join the dodo, passenger pigeon, quagga and Tasmanian wolf as victims of the predations of modern humans.

A rhino, attended by a vet, gives birth at Budapest zoo.

"The northern white is now in a desperate situation," said Hermes. "It is in the tightest possible population bottleneck from which it may bounce back or simply die out. I still believe there is hope, however."

The fate of the northern white is tied to that of its cousin, the southern white. The two are hard to distinguish: the southern has slightly smoother skin, the northern slightly longer legs. Thousands of both subspecies roamed Africa's savannah until game hunters and poachers cut the population of each to around 100 animals. In the 1960s, South Africa launched a major program aimed at preserving the southern white. Guards were sent to protect reserves, and poachers were pursued relentlessly. Today there are more than 11,000 southern white rhinos.

By contrast, numbers of the northern white, which once roamed across Uganda, Sudan and Congo, continued to drop, its territory suffering continued outbreaks of civil instability and war. By 2000 the species had been reduced to 30 animals in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba National Park. By last year there were only four left.

The butchered carcass of a northern white rhino, killed in Garamba, Congo.

There are a further 10 in zoos, however: seven in Dvur Kralove in the Czech Republic and three in San Diego. Of these, only two are fertile females: Najin and her daughter Fatu, in Dvur. "The issue is simple: how we can best use these animals to maximize numbers of northern whites as quickly as possible," said Hermes. "The obvious answer is captive breeding, though this has proved to be very difficult with white rhinos. They are very reluctant to breed in zoos."

Shrinking species Rhinos once ranged over large parts of Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia. There are five main species and most are endangered - mainly because of poaching. Rhino horns are sold on the black market, as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicines or as dagger handles in Yemen and Oman. Population numbers Black rhino: 3,610 White (northern and southern): 11,330 Indian: 2,500 Javan: 60 Sumatran: 300

The next step has been to intervene with artificial insemination: not easy with a very large, bad-tempered, armored herbivore whose reproductive system has been a mystery to veterinary science. But using modern medical aids, including ultrasound scanners and instruments such as those employed by Hermes and his colleagues, scientists recently succeeded in breeding the first white rhino calf using artificial insemination. The calf, a southern white and still unnamed, was born at Budapest zoo three weeks ago. "That was a real breakthrough," said Hermes. "Everything we learn from the southern white, we can then use on the northern once we have established the proper protocols."

Later this year scientists will attempt the first artificial insemination of either Najin or Fatu at Dvur. "Even if that works, it will still only be a start," said Hermes. As he pointed out, rhinos produce a single calf every two years at best, which greatly limits numbers that these two females might produce.

Scientists have a couple of other tricks up their sleeves, however. The first exploits the similarity between the southern and northern white. Researchers are learning how to remove eggs from ageing rhinos, allowing them to build up stocks of northern white eggs, which could then be fertilized. The resulting embryos could be implanted in southern whites, which would act as surrogate mothers for the species.

Scientists are also planning to use separation techniques to split female-producing sperm from the male-producing version. "That way we can ensure we produce only female northern calves. From those we can breed even more northern whites. In the end, we might just save the northern white rhino," said Hermes.