Northern white rhinos: Longleat's animals help species avoid extinction

Three female Southern white rhinos at Longleat Safari Park
Three female Southern white rhinos at Longleat Safari Park Credit: Ian Turner

Three rhinoceroses at a Wiltshire safari park will play a key role to save the species from extinction.

Eggs collected from the trio of Southern white rhinos at Longleat will be used as part of a scientific project to help boost population figures of the endangered sub-species.

A team of international scientists are hoping to use assisted reproductive technologies to produce offspring with the help of Razina, Ebun, and Murashi.

Leah Russell, Longleat’s lead rhino keeper, said: "The aim is to use eggs collected from our females, fertilise them in vitro, and then implant them into surrogate female southern white rhinos at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

"If this proves successful, they will then attempt implanting 12 pure northern rhino embryos, which have been fertilised with frozen sperm from deceased males, into southern surrogates."

Eggs from Razina, Ebun, and Murashi (pictured) will be used in a project to resurrect the Northern white rhino population. Credit: Ian Turner

There are only two known surviving northern white rhinos - Fatu and Najin - who live under 24-hour guarded surveillance in Kenya.

Scientists recognise the stem-cell associated project is a race against time for the sub-species.

Longleat is the first UK-based zoological collection to be involved in this ground-breaking project, with a number of other zoos in mainland Europe also participating.

The BioRescue research consortium is being led by Professor Thomas Hildebrandt, head of the Department of Reproduction Management at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW).

He said: "BioRescue is such a challenging and complex conservation science project.

Dr. Susanne Holtze (right), Prof. Thomas Hildebrandt (centre) and Dr. Daniel Čižmár (left) are involved with the reproduction project Credit: Longleat Safari Park

"Therefore, it is really important that we are joined by competent international partners such as Longleat to master this ambitious mission."

Professor Hildebrandt and his team will take the extracted eggs to the Avantea laboratory in Italy where they will be fertilised using sperm from a male white rhino before being flown to Africa for the implantation procedures.

The northern white rhino is a subspecies of white rhino which used to live in parts of Uganda, Chad, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Years of widespread poaching and civil war in their natural habitat have reduced northern white rhino populations and they are now considered to be extinct in the wild.

Sudan, the last surviving male northern white rhinoceros, died of an age-related illness at Ol Pejeta Conservancy on the 19 March, 2018.