Last Ditch Efforts for Northern White Rhino

J

JBZvolunteer

Well-Known Member
Just read a news source that in the beginning of the year, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya put a male southern white rhino in with two female northern white rhinos in hopes of breeding. These are some of the rhinos that use to live at Dvur Kralove. The hope is that if they breed, it will help conserve the bloodline and then the calves can be bred back to more northern white rhinos to increase the northern white rhino lineage in there blood. For more info on the breeding attempt read the link below:
Male Southern White Rhino Introduced in Endangered Species Boma | Ol Pejeta Conservancy
 
Pertinax said:
A March posting on the same site indicates some mating activity.
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Pertinax .. (and all others willing to listen / hear / read), it really is THE LAST DITCH attempt at rescuing an iconic species of the East African plains before it goes extinct.

This commendable action / project involving both a Kenyan wildlife sanctuary and the zoo biology staff of the Dvur Kralove Zoo remains the last hope for Ceratotherium cottoni ...
 
FBBird said:
Haven't Dvur Kralove already tried this?
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Not with F Nabire as she was considered unable to breed due to uterine cysts et cetera. As techniques have improved substantially they in partnership with the Berlin IZW team have done a recovery op with her.
 
I may possibly get shot down and criticised for my comments but here goes. I personally don't see back breeding as a solution to the problem here. Once it starts they are never going to be pure Northern White Rhinos. Would it not be better to import Southern White Rhinos to the area as I'm fairly sure they will fill exactly the same ecological niche as the Northern White Rhinos. As tragic as the situation is with the Northern White Rhino I feel it is probably a lost cause and money would be better spent introducing Southern White Rhinos into the environment where the Northern White Rhinos once roamed.
 
You wouldn't get shot down for such a suggestion I don't think. Possibly this will be the longerterm result if all else fails and the Northern White genes become lost forever. It wouldn't seem difficult to achieve, but presumably only after all attempts at saving the Northerns have been explored and failed and it hasn't quite reached that stage yet..
 
I wouldn't shoot you down, either. It upsets me a lot, but I think C.(s).cottoni is a lost cause. Those resources would arguably better spent on Javan or Sumatran Rhino.
 
I agree with Pertinax and Ian Robinson - I would love to keep the Northerns pure, but at this stage we can't. And backbreeding won't make a pure one once you've introduced Southern blood, but at least the Northern genes will still exist. Any population bred however would need to be kept separate from wild Southern populations.

But breeding rhinos is a slow process with only a few northerns there is a good chance of failure. Once the Northern is extinct then Southerns can be used instead, as has been already suggested.

:p

Hix
 
Northern and Southern subspecies differ in their resistence to locality-specific illnesses.

Northerns should be much more resistent to sleeping illness, filariasis and Babesia-malaria. The hybrids might inherit it. That would be good, because otherwise Southerns can´t be introduced into large part of the former range of cottoni.
 
Mr T said:
I may possibly get shot down and criticised for my comments but here goes. I personally don't see back breeding as a solution to the problem here. Once it starts they are never going to be pure Northern White Rhinos. Would it not be better to import Southern White Rhinos to the area as I'm fairly sure they will fill exactly the same ecological niche as the Northern White Rhinos. As tragic as the situation is with the Northern White Rhino I feel it is probably a lost cause and money would be better spent introducing Southern White Rhinos into the environment where the Northern White Rhinos once roamed.
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What you are suggesting is already happening in some places. Kenya has reintroduced southern white rhinos in some of their national parks. I think that Uganda might be also.
 
Uganda already has Southerns in a Rhino sanctuary (eleven from memory) where they are guarded day and night, but whether there are plans to re-introduce them into any National Park areas they formerly inhabited I don't know.

:p

Hix
 
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