Crowdfunding to save the Northern White Rhino

[Crowthorne]

Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Dvůr Králové Zoo have started a crowdfunding campaign. Money raised will be used for research into developing IVF techniques to try and save the Northern White Rhino.

Make a Rhino, Save a Species by Rob Breare - GoFundMe

The only hope now is to develop assisted methods of reproduction to allow new northern white rhino calves to be born. Given the age and reproductive health issues that affect the remaining females, we are exploring in vitro fertilization and an embryo transfer. We aim to combine eggs from the remaining females with stored northern white sperm to create embryos that can be carried by surrogate southern white females.

This has never been successfully carried out with rhinos before. It will be costly – we are working towards £0.5m (approx. $0.8m). It could take 12-36 months of research to develop the new techniques required. There are no guarantees of success. But if we are successful, we will save a species.

There is no guarantee of success. We could spend this money and fail. But we hope that you will agree that it is worth trying.

Even if we do succeed it could take us much, much longer than the time frames we are hoping for as outlined above.

We estimate that we need to raise £0.5m (approx. $0.8m) before fees to make this work but we could be wrong – we could need more and would continue fundraising.

Should any funds remain after success or failure, then the committee set up to safeguard the northern white future will reinvest those monies into protecting the world’s remaining rhino species.