OL PEJETA, Kenya (AP) ― The task was never going to be easy: Fly four highly endangered rhinos from a Czech Republic zoo to East Africa, drive them to the savannah grasses of Mount Kenya and hope that the natural environment helps produce a calf, staving off extinction.
The experiment has all but failed.
The keepers of three northern white rhinos in Kenya ― half of the world’s remaining rhinos of that species ― have begun saying publicly for the first time that their one male and two female rhinos will certainly not reproduce naturally.
The silver lining, though, is science. Efforts will now be made to keep the species alive through in vitro fertilization, and possibly by working with the rhinos’ genetic material in a budding field known as deextinction.
“We always knew from the very beginning that the chances of this working were small even if they bred,” said Richard Vigne, chief executive of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the rhinos have lived since December 2009.
The conservancy said in a statement that artificial reproductive techniques “could provide the last chance of survival for the world’s most endangered mammal.”
That echoed the phrase written on the wooden crates the rhinos were transported in from Nairobi to Ol Pejeta: “Last Chance to Survive.”
Some animal experts at the time said the effort was too little, too late, and that the experiment’s budget could have been better spent on other conservation projects. But the bulk of the more than $100,000 effort came from a donor ― Alastair Lucas, then the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs in Australia ― who wanted to see the project carried out.
Vigne said the project was not done in vain.
“They’ve been returned to Africa from a zoo, and they’ve thrived in that environment. In that way it’s been a success,” he said. “The fact they haven’t bred is clearly a massive disappointment, but there are new technologies being invented all the time to rescue technically extinct species.”
One of the two male rhinos transferred to Ol Pejeta died of an unknown cause earlier this year.
Veterinarians that examined the remaining three last month determined that the male’s sperm count is very low and that the two females either cannot get pregnant or not carry a pregnancy to term.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
